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[1]	Margaret Atwood, Life Before Man Matt Cohen, The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone
Non-fiction	Maria Tippett, Emily Carr[1]	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[1]	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[1]	Suzanne Jacob, La Survie Suzanne Paradis, Miss Charlie
Non-fiction	Dominique Clift and Sheila McLeod Arnopoulos, Le fait anglais au Québec[1]	Daniel Latouche, Une société de l'ambiguïté Pierre Nepveu, Les mots à l'écoute
Poetry or drama	Robert Melançon, Peinture aveugle[1]	Marcel Bélanger, Migrations André Roy, Les passions du samedi