At a press conference in Toronto this morning, the Canada Council for the Arts announced the winners of the 2013 Governor General's Literary Awards.
Canada Council board member — and an acclaimed publisher and author herself — Anna Porter welcomed guests as the winning authors waited backstage to be called forward. She gave a special mention to the "heroic book publishers" who continue to support books and authors in Canada.
This year the announcement was live streamed across the country for the first time, allowing book lovers from coast to coast to watch the winners announced in real time.
While all the winners and winning publishers are surely thrilled, fiction winner Eleanor Catton is having a particularly good year, having now received both the Booker Prize in England as well as the Governor General's Award for her widely-praised new novel The Luminaries.
The 2013 English language winners are:
Fiction: Eleanor Catton for The Luminaries (McClelland & Stewart)
Poetry: Katherena Vermette for North End Love Songs (The Muses' Company)
Drama: Nicolas Billon for Fault Lines: Greenland — Iceland — Faroe Islands (Coach House Books)
Non-fiction: Sandra Djwa for Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page (McGill-Queen's University Press)
Children's Literature (Text): Teresa Toten for The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B (Doubleday Canada)
Children's Literature (Illustration): Matt James for Northwest Passage, text by Stan Rogers (Groundwood Books)
Translation: Donald Winkler for The Major Verbs (Signal Editions)
The winners will be feted at the traditional reception on Thursday, November 28 at Rideau Hall, in Ottawa, hosted by his Excellency the Right Honourable Governor General David Johnston.
For more information about the awards and for the list of French language winners, please visit the Canada Council's website.
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