The Canada Council for the Arts announced the winners of the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Awards on Wednesday, November 17.

Each winner receives $25,000, with an additional $3,000 awarded to publishers to assist in marketing the title. The winners were chosen from 70 finalists announced last month.

Fiction

• Tainna: The Unseen Ones, Norma Dunning (Douglas & McIntyre)

Poetry

• The Junta of Happenstance, Tolu Oloruntoba (Anstruther Books/Palimpsest Press)

Drama

• Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, Hannah Moscovitch (Playwrights Canada Press)

Nonfiction

•  alfabet/alphabet: a memoir of a first language, Sadiqa de Meijer (Anstruther Books/Palimpsest Press)

Young People’s Literature – Text

• Firefly, Philippa Dowding (DCB/Cormorant Books)

Young People’s Literature – Illustrated Books

• On the Trapline, David A. Robertson and Julie Flett, ill. (Tundra Books)

Translation (from French to English)

• This Radiant Life, translated by Erín Moure (Book*hug Press)
  Translation of La vie radieuse, by Chantal Neveu

The seven French-language winners are listed on ggbooks.ca.

Wednesday’s announcement of GG winners is the second one this year, after the announcement of the 2020 winners was delayed from last fall to this spring due to the pandemic. The Canada Council for the Arts expects to return to its regular announcement schedule for the Governor General’s Literary Awards in 2022.