It was a big morning for HarperCollins Canada and author Thomas King. Canada Council Director and CEO Simon Brault announced the winners of the 2014 Governor General’s Literary Awards, including King, who claimed the English-language fiction prize for his novel, The Back of the Turtle (HarperCollins Canada), and Micheal Harris, who took the non-fiction prize for The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection (HarperCollins Canada).

L’Indien malcommode : un portrait inattendu des Autochtones d’Amérique du Nord (Les Éditions du Boréal), Daniel Poliquin’s French translation of King’s 2013 book, The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America (Doubleday Canada), claimed the prize for English-French translation.

Jillian Tamaki won in the Children’s Literature (illustration) category for This One Summer (Groundwood Books), co-created with her cousin, Mariko Tamaki, who was also nominated for the book in the Children’s Literature (text) category. In a surprise upset, that award went to Raziel Reid for When Everything Feels Like the Movies (Arsenal Pulp Press).

The winners in the remaining English-language categories are:

Poetry

Arleen Paré, Lake of Two Mountains (Brick Books)

Drama

Jordan Tannahill, Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays (Playwrights Canada Press)

Translation (French to English)

Peter Feldstein and Paul-Émile Borduas, A Critical Biography (McGill-Queen’s University Press); English translation of Paul-Émile Borduas (1905–1960) : biographie critique et analyse de l’œuvre by François-Marc Gagnon (Éditions Fides)

The winners in the French-language categories are:

Fiction

Andrée A. Michaud, Bondrée (Éditions Québec Amérique)

Non-fiction

Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, Tenir tête (Lux Éditeur)
Poetry

José Acquelin, Anarchie de la lumière (les éditions du passage)

Drama

Carole Fréchette, Small Talk (Leméac Éditeur/Actes Sud)

Children’s Literature (text)

Linda Amyot, Le jardin d’Amsterdam (Leméac Éditeur)

Children’s Literature (illustration)

Marianne Dubuc, Le lion et l’oiseau (Les Éditions de la Pastèque)