Canada Council Announces 2021 Governor General's Literary Award Finalists

This morning the Canada Council announced the English and French language finalists for the Governor General's Literary Awards. The seven categories cover multiple genres. The fiction list is often compared to the Atwood-Gibson Writers' Trust Award for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize lists (with the most coveted honour being the rare "hat trick" of being nominated for all three); however this year features little crossover between the three. 

See below for the full lists, and stay tuned for the announcement of the winners in all categories, who will receive $25,000 each, on November 17. 

Fiction

• Fictional Father by Joe Ollmann (Drawn & Quarterly)
• Home Waltz by G. A. Grisenthwaite (Palimpsest Press)
• Second Place by Rachel Cusk (Harper Perennial / HarperCollins Canada)
• Tainna: The Unseen Ones by Norma Dunning (Douglas & McIntyre)
• You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. by Sheung-King (Book*hug Press)

Poetry

• A History of the Theories of Rain by Stephen Collis (Talonbooks)
• A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure by Hoa Nguyen (Wave Books)
• Sulphurtongue by Rebecca Salazar (McClelland & Stewart / Penguin Random House Canada)
• The Junta of Happenstance by Tolu Oloruntoba (Anstruther Books / Palimpsest Press)
• The Untranslatable I by Roxanna Bennett (Gordon Hill Press)

Drama

• Crippled by Paul David Power (Breakwater Books)
• Selfie by Christine Quintana (Playwrights Canada Press)
• Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes by Hannah Moscovitch (Playwrights Canada Press)
• Take d Milk, Nah? by Jivesh Parasram (Playwrights Canada Press)
• Two Indians by Falen Johnson (Scirocco Drama / J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing)

Nonfiction

• alfabet/alphabet: a memoir of a first language by Sadiqa de Meijer (Anstruther Books / Palimpsest Press)
• Care of: Letters, Connections, and Cures by Ivan Coyote (McClelland & Stewart / Penguin Random House Canada)
• Revery: A Year of Bees by Jenna Butler (Wolsak and Wynn Publishers)
• The Day the World Stops Shopping by J.B. MacKinnon (Random House Canada / Penguin Random House Canada)
• What I Remember, What I Know: The Life of a High Arctic Exile by Larry Audlaluk (Inhabit Media)

Young People’s Literature by Text

• Blood Like Magic by Liselle Sambury (Margaret K. McElderry Books / Simon & Schuster)
• Firefly by Philippa Dowding (DCB / Cormorant Books)
• Peter Lee's Notes from the Field by Angela Ahn (Tundra Books / Penguin Random House Canada)
• The Fabulous Zed Watson! by Basil Sylvester and Kevin Sylvester (HarperCollins Publishers)
• Unravel by Sharon Jennings (Red Deer Press)

Young People’s Literature by Illustrated Books

• Mii maanda ezhi-gkendmaanh / This Is How I Know by Brittany Luby and Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley (Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press)
• On the Trapline by David A. Robertson and Julie Flett (Tundra Books / Penguin Random House Canada)
• Out Into the Big Wide Lake by Paul Harbridge and Josée Bisaillon (Tundra Books / Penguin Random House Canada)
• The Library Bus by Bahram Rahman and Gabrielle Grimard (Pajama Press)
• The Wind and the Trees by Todd Stewart (Owlkids Books)

Translation (from French to English)

• A Cemetery for Bees by Translated by Katia Grubisic (Linda Leith Publishing); translation of Le cimetière des abeilles, by Alina Dumitrescu
• Paul at Home by Translated by Helge Dascher and Rob Aspinall (Drawn & Quarterly); translation of Paul à la maison, by Michel Rabagliati
• People, State, and War Under the French Regime in Canada by Translated by Peter Feldstein (McGill-Queenʼs University Press); translation of Le Peuple, lʼÉtat et la Guerre au Canada sous le Régime français, by Louise Dechêne
• The Lover, the Lake by Translated by Susan Ouriou (Freehand Books); translation of Lʼamant du lac, by Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau
• This Radiant Life by Translated by Erín Moure (Book*hug Press); translation of La vie radieuse, by Chantal Neveu

For information on the French language nominees, please visit the Canada Council website.