1979 Governor General's Awards

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	Jack Hodgins, The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne	Margaret Atwood, Life Before Man Matt Cohen, The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone
Non-fiction	Maria Tippett, Emily Carr	Robert Bothwell and William Kilbourn, C.D. Howe Larry Pratt and John Richards, Prairie Capitalism
Poetry or drama	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	Marie-Claire Blais, Le Sourd dans la ville	Suzanne Jacob, La Survie Suzanne Paradis, Miss Charlie
Non-fiction	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	Robert Melançon, Peinture aveugle	Marcel Bélanger, Migrations André Roy, Les passions du samedi