Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction Canadian literary award
The Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction is a Canadian literary award that annually recognizes one Canadian writer for a non-fiction book written in English. Since 1987[ 1] Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit , seven each for creators of English- and French-language books. Originally presented by the Canadian Authors Association ,[clarification needed the Governor General's Awards program became a project of the Canada Council for the Arts in 1959.[ 2]
The program was created in 1937 and inaugurated that November for 1936 publications in two English-language categories, conventionally called the 1936 Governor General's Awards .[ 1] creative non-fiction and academic non-fiction ;[ 3]
The winners alone were announced until 1979, when Canada Council released in advance a shortlist of three nominees. Since then, the advance shortlist has numbered three to five.
Winners and nominees
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction winners, 2000-2009[ 4]
Year
Author
Title
Ref.
2000
Nega Mezlekia Notes from the Hyena's Belly
Robert Bringhurst A Story as Sharp as a Knife
Trevor Herriot River in a Dry Land
A. B. McKillop The Spinster and the Prophet
2001
Thomas Homer-Dixon The Ingenuity Gap
Susan Crean The Laughing One: A Journey to Emily Carr
Ross A. Laird Grain of Truth: The Ancient Lessons of Craft
Alberto Manguel Reading Pictures: A History of Love and Hate
Jack Todd The Taste of Metal: A Deserter's Story
2002
Andrew Nikiforuk Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Big Oil
Carolyn Abraham Possessing Genius: The Bizarre Odyssey of Einstein's Brain
Jill Frayne Starting Out in the Afternoon: A Mid-Life Journey into Wild Land
Stephen Henighan When Words Deny the World: The Reshaping of Canadian Writing
Don McKay Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness
2003
Margaret MacMillan Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
Andrew Clark A Keen Soldier: The Execution of Second World War Private Harold Pringle
Andrew Cohen While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World
Maggie de Vries Vancouver, for Missing Sarah: A Vancouver Woman Remembers Her Vanished Sister
Ross King Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling
2004
Roméo Dallaire Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
Anne Coleman I'll Tell You a Secret: A Memory of Seven Summers
Christopher Dewdney Acquainted With the Night: Excursions Through the World After Dark
Jane Jacobs Dark Age Ahead
Jan Zwicky Wisdom & Metaphor
2005
John Vaillant The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed [ 5]
Ted Bishop Riding with Rilke: Reflections on Motorcycles and Books
Michael Mitchell The Molly Fire
Edward Shorter Written in the Flesh: A History of Desire
Jessica Warner The Incendiary: The Misadventures of John the Painter, First Modern Terrorist
2006
Ross King The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism
Afua Cooper The Hanging of Angélique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal
Susanne Reber Robert Renaud
Starlight Tour: The Last, Lonely Night of Neil Stonechild
Michael Strangelove The Empire of Mind: Digital Piracy and the Anti-Capitalist Movement
Christine Wiesenthal The Half-Lives of Pat Lowther
2007
Karolyn Smardz Frost I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad
Rodrigo Bascunan Christian Pearce
Enter the Babylon System: Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent
John English Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Volume One: 1919-1968
Stephanie Nolen 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa
Bridget Stutchbury Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World's Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them
2008
Christie Blatchford Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army [ 6]
Douglas Hunter God’s Mercies: Rivalry, Betrayal and the Dream of Discovery
Sid Marty The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek
James Orbinski An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century
Chris Turner The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need
2009
M. G. Vassanji A Place Within: Rediscovering India [ 7]
Randall Hansen Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-45
Trevor Herriot Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds
Eric Margolis American Raj: Liberation or Domination? (Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World)
Eric Siblin The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece
2010s
Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction winners, 2010-2019[ 4]
Year
Author
Title
Ref.
2010
Allan Casey Lakeland: Journeys into the Soul of Canada
Elizabeth Abbott A History of Marriage
Ian Brown The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search for His Disabled Son
Karen Connelly Burmese Lessons: A Love Story
John English Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968-2000
2011
Charles Foran Mordecai: The Life and Times
Nathan M. Greenfield The Damned: The Canadians at the Battle of Hong Kong and the POW Experience, 1941-45
Richard Gwyn Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times, Volume Two: 1867-1891
JJ Lee The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit
Andrew Nikiforuk Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America's Great Forests
2012
Ross King Leonardo and the Last Supper [ 8]
Nahlah Ayed A Thousand Farewells: A Reporter's Journey from Refugee Camp to the Arab Spring
Carol Bishop-Gwyn The Pursuit of Perfection: A Life of Celia Franca
Wade Davis Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest
Noah Richler What We Talk About When We Talk About War
2013
Sandra Djwa Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page [ 9]
Carolyn Abraham The Juggler's Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us
Nina Munk The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty
Allen Smutylo The Memory of Water
Priscila Uppal Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother
2014
Michael Harris The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection [ 10]
Arno Kopecky The Oil Man and the Sea: Navigating the Northern Gateway
Edmund Metatawabin Alexandra Shimo
Up Ghost River: A Chief’s Journey Through the Turbulent Waters of Native History
Maria Mutch Know the Night: A Memoir of Survival in the Small Hours
2015
Mark L. Winston Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive [ 11]
Ted Bishop The Social Life of Ink: Culture, Wonder, and Our Relationship with the Written Word
David Halton Dispatches from the Front: Matthew Halton, Canada's Voice at War
Michael Harris Party of One: Stephen Harper and Canada's Radical Makeover
Armand Garnet Ruffo Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing into Thunderbird
2016
Bill Waiser A World We Have Lost: Saskatchewan Before 1905
Kamal Al-Solaylee Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (To Everyone)
Teva Harrison In-Between Days: A Memoir about Living with Cancer
[ 12]
Harold R. Johnson Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours)
Marc Raboy Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World
2017
Graeme Wood The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State
Sharon Butala Where I Live Now: A Journey through Love and Loss to Healing and Hope
Sarah de Leeuw Where It Hurts
Elaine Dewar The Handover: How Bigwigs and Bureaucrats Transferred Canada's Best Publisher and the Best Part of our Literary Heritage to a Foreign Multinational
Carol Off All We Leave Behind: A Reporter's Journey into the Lives of Others
2018
Darrel J. McLeod Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age [ 13]
Carys Cragg Dead Reckoning: How I Came To Meet the Man Who Murdered My Father
Aida Edemariam The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History
Terese Marie Mailhot Heart Berries
Abu Bakr Al-Rabeeah Winnie Yeung
Homes: A Refugee Story
2019
Don Gillmor To the River: Losing My Brother [ 14]
Brian Harvey Sea Trial: Sailing After My Father
Naomi K. Lewis Tiny Lights for Travellers
Alan Walker Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times
Dan Werb City of Omens: A Search for the Missing Women of the Borderlands
2020s
References
^ a b
"Governor General's Literary Awards" [table of winners, 1936–1999]. online guide to writing in canada (track0.com/ogwc). Retrieved 2015-08-18.
^
"Governor General's Literary Awards" . The Canadian Encyclopedia
^ "Win Governor-General's Literary Awards" . Victoria Times-Colonist . Retrieved January 10, 2019 – via Newspapers.com .^ a b c d e f g h i j "Past GGBooks winners and finalists" . Governor General's Literary Awards . Retrieved 2021-11-27 .^ "Awards, Part 2: The Governor General's" . Shelf Awareness . Retrieved 2022-10-13 .^ "Awards: Governor General Winners" . Shelf Awareness . Retrieved 2022-10-13 .^ "Awards: Man Asian Literary Prize; Governor General's Awards" . Shelf Awareness . Retrieved 2022-10-13 .^ "Awards: Governor General's; Hilary Weston; New Mexico and Ariz" . Shelf Awareness . Retrieved 2022-10-13 .^ "Awards: Governor General's Literary; Goldsmiths" . Shelf Awareness . Retrieved 2022-10-13 .^ "Awards: Governor General's Literary" . Shelf Awareness . Retrieved 2022-10-13 .^ "Awards: Governor General's Literary" . Shelf Awareness . Retrieved 2022-10-13 .^ "Obituary Note: Teva Harrison" . Shelf Awareness . Retrieved 2022-10-13 .^ "Awards: Governor General's Literary Winners" . Shelf Awareness . Retrieved 2022-10-13 .^ "Awards: Governor General's Literary; Warwick Women in Translation" . Shelf Awareness . Retrieved 2022-10-13 .^ "Michelle Good says celebrating fiction win feels 'petty and selfish' after residential school discovery" . CTV News , June 1, 2021.^ "Francesca Ekwuyasi, Billy-Ray Belcourt & Anne Carson among 2020 Governor General's Literary Awards finalists" . CBC Books , May 4, 2021.^ "Inuk author Norma Dunning wins $25K Governor General's fiction prize" Archived 2021-11-17 at the Wayback Machine . Coast Reporter , November 17, 2021.^ "Rachel Cusk among fiction finalists for Governor General’s Literary Awards" . Toronto Star ^ Deborah Dundas, "Sheila Heti, Eli Baxter win 2022 Governor General’s Literary Awards for fiction and non-fiction" . Toronto Star
^ "The finalists for the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction" . CBC Books . Retrieved October 12, 2022 .^ "Anuja Varghese wins Governor General's literary award for fiction" . Toronto Star ^ "Suzette Mayr, Iain Reid among finalists for Governor General's Literary Awards" . Burnaby Now ^ Cassandra Drudi, "Jordan Abel, Niigaan Sinclair among 2024 Governor General’s award winners" . Quill & Quire
^ Cassandra Drudi, "Canisia Lubrin, Danny Ramadan among 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award finalists" . Quill & Quire
External links
English-language awards French-language awards Awards by year
