1979 Governor General's Awards

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Each winner of the 1979 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit was selected by a panel of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. The 1979 awards were the first for which a shortlist of finalists was released a month before the presentation of the awards.

English

Category	Winner	Nominated
Fiction	Template:Blue ribbon Jack Hodgins, The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne	Margaret Atwood, Life Before Man Matt Cohen, The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone
Non-fiction	Template:Blue ribbon Maria Tippett, Emily Carr	Robert Bothwell and William Kilbourn, C.D. Howe Larry Pratt and John Richards, Prairie Capitalism
Poetry or drama	Template:Blue ribbon Michael Ondaatje, There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do	Erín Moure, Empire, York Street Susan Musgrave, A Man to Marry, a Man to Bury

French

Category	Winner	Nominated
Fiction	Template:Blue ribbon Marie-Claire Blais, Le Sourd dans la ville	Suzanne Jacob, La Survie Suzanne Paradis, Miss Charlie
Non-fiction	Template:Blue ribbon Dominique Clift and Sheila McLeod Arnopoulos, Le fait anglais au Québec	Daniel Latouche, Une société de l'ambiguïté Pierre Nepveu, Les mots à l'écoute
Poetry or drama	Template:Blue ribbon Robert Melançon, Peinture aveugle	Marcel Bélanger, Migrations André Roy, Les passions du samedi