Governor General's Award for English-language drama

The Governor General's Award for English-language drama honours excellence in Canadian English-language playwriting. The award was created in 1981 when the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry or drama was divided.

Because the award is presented for plays published in print, a play's eligibility for the award can sometimes be several years later than its eligibility for awards, such as the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play or the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award, which are based on the theatrical staging.^[1] Titles which compile several works by the playwright into a single volume may also be nominated for or win the award.

Winners and nominees

1980s

Governor General's Award for English-language drama honorees, 1980-1989

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
1981	Sharon Pollock	Blood Relations	[2]
	Charles Tidler	Straight Ahead and Blind Dancers	[3]
	George F. Walker	Theatre of the Film Noir
1982	John Gray	Billy Bishop Goes to War	[4]
	Lawrence Jeffery	Clay	[5]
	Betty Lambert	Jennie's Story
1983	Anne Chislett	Quiet in the Land	[6]
	No advance shortlist was released this year.		[7]
1984	Judith Thompson	White Biting Dog	[8]
	James Reaney	The Canadian Brothers or The Prophecy Fulfilled	[9]
	George Ryga	A Letter to My Son
1985	George F. Walker	Criminals in Love	[10]
	David French	Salt-Water Moon	[11]
	Margaret Hollingsworth	War Babies
	Ken Mitchell	Gone the Burning Sun
1986	Sharon Pollock	Doc	[12]
	Frank Moher	Odd Jobs	[13]
	Allan Stratton	Papers
1987	John Krizanc	Prague	[14]
	Wendy Lill	The Occupation of Heather Rose	[15]
	Michael D.C. McKinlay	Walt and Roy
	Sharon Pollock	Whiskey Six Cadenza
1988	George F. Walker	Nothing Sacred	[16]
	Dennis Foon	Skin	[17]
	Tomson Highway	The Rez Sisters
	Maureen Hunter	Footprints on the Moon
1989	Judith Thompson	The Other Side of the Dark	[18]
	Tomson Highway	Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing	[19]
	John Krizanc	Tamara

1990s

Governor General's Award for English-language drama honorees, 1990-1999

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
1990	Ann-Marie MacDonald	Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)	[20]
	Audrey Butler	Black Friday?	[21]
	John Mighton	Scientific Americans
	George F. Walker	Love and Anger
1991	Joan MacLeod	Amigo's Blue Guitar	[22]
	Sally Clark	The Trial of Judith K.	[23]
	Don Druick	Where Is Kabuki?
	Linda Griffiths	The Darling Family
	Daniel David Moses	Coyote City
1992	John Mighton	Possible Worlds and A Short History of Night	[24]
	Daniel Brooks, Guillermo Verdecchia	The Noam Chomsky Lectures	[25]
	Dave Carley	Writing With Our Feet
	Judith Thompson	Lion in the Streets
	Dianne Warren	Serpent in the Night Sky
1993	Guillermo Verdecchia	Fronteras Americanas	[26]
	Daniel MacIvor	House Humans	[27]
	Raymond Storey	The Saints and Apostles
	David Young	Glenn
1994	Morris Panych	The Ends of the Earth	[28]
	Joanna McClelland Glass	If We Are Women	[29]
	Wendy Lill	All Fall Down
	Bryden MacDonald	Whale Riding Weather
1995	Jason Sherman	Three in the Back, Two in the Head	[30]
	Brad Fraser	Poor Super Man	[31]
	Deborah Kimmett	Miracle Mother
	Joan MacLeod	The Hope Slide/Little Sister
	Eugene Stickland	Some Assembly Required
1996	Colleen Wagner	The Monument	[32]
	Wendy Lill	The Glace Bay Miners' Museum	[33]
	John Mighton	The Little Years
	Michael O'Brien	Mad Boy Chronicle
	Betty Quan	Mother Tongue
1997	Ian Ross	fareWel	[34]
	Maureen Hunter	Atlantis	[35]
	Lee MacDougall	High Life
	Jason Sherman	Reading Hebron
	Judith Thompson	Sled
1998	Djanet Sears	Harlem Duet	[36]
	Bruce McManus	Selkirk Avenue	[37]
	Richard Sanger	Not Spain
	Sandra Shamas	Sandra Shamas: A Trilogy of Performances
	David Young	Inexpressible Island
1999	Michael Healey	The Drawer Boy	[38]
	Wendy Lill	Corker	[39]
	Daniel MacIvor	Marion Bridge
	Colleen Murphy	Beating Heart Cadaver
	Theresa Tova	Still the Night

2000s

Governor General's Award for English-language drama honorees, 2000-2009

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
2000	Timothy Findley	Elizabeth Rex	[40]
	George Boyd	Consecrated Ground	[41]
	Linda Griffiths	Alien Creature
	Daniel MacIvor, Daniel Brooks	Monster
	Jason Sherman	It's All True
2001	Kent Stetson	The Harps of God	[42]
	Mark Brownell	Monsieur d'Eon	[43]
	Clem Martini	A Three Martini Lunch
	Michael Redhill	Building Jerusalem
	Jason Sherman	An Acre of Time
2002	Kevin Kerr	Unity (1918)	[44]
	Claudia Dey	The Gwendolyn Poems	[45]
	Lorena Gale	Je me souviens
	Michael MacLennan	The Shooting Stage
2003	Vern Thiessen	Einstein's Gift	[46]
	Marie Clements	Burning Vision	[47]
	Brian Drader	Prok
	Sunil Kuruvilla	Rice Boy
	Michael MacLennan	Last Romantics
2004	Morris Panych	Girl in the Goldfish Bowl	[48]
	Robert Chafe	Butler's Marsh and Tempting Providence	[49]
	Michael Healey	Rune Arlidge
	Karen Hines	The Pochsy Plays
	Mieko Ouchi	The Red Priest (Eight Ways to Say Goodbye)
2005	John Mighton	Half Life	[50]
	Marjorie Chan	China Doll	[51]
	Don Druick	Through the Eyes
	Daniel MacIvor	Cul-de-sac
	Richard Sanger	Two Words for Snow
2006	Daniel MacIvor	I Still Love You	[52]
	Morwyn Brebner	The Optimists	[53]
	Lisa Codrington	Cast Iron
	Jason Sherman	Adapt or Die: Plays New and Used
	Drew Hayden Taylor	In a World Created by a Drunken God
2007	Colleen Murphy	The December Man	[54]
	Salvatore Antonio	In Gabriel's Kitchen	[55]
	Anosh Irani	The Bombay Plays: The Matka King and Bombay Black
	Rosa Labordé	Léo
	Morris Panych	What Lies Before Us
2008	Catherine Banks	Bone Cage	[56]
	Ronnie Burkett	10 Days on Earth	[57]
	Paul Ciufo	Reverend Jonah
	Marie Clements	Copper Thunderbird
	Judith Thompson	Palace of the End
2009	Kevin Loring	Where the Blood Mixes	[58]
	Beverley Cooper	Innocence Lost: A Play about Steven Truscott	[59]
	Joan MacLeod	Another Home Invasion
	Hannah Moscovitch	East of Berlin
	Michael Nathanson	Talk

2010s

Governor General's Award for English-language drama honorees, 2010-2019

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
2010	Robert Chafe	Afterimage	[60]
	Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman	Scratch	[61]
	Michael Healey	Courageous
	Judith Thompson	Such Creatures
	David Yee	lady in the red dress
2011	Erin Shields	If We Were Birds	[62]
	Brendan Gall	Minor Complications: Two Plays	[63]
	Jonathan Garfinkel	House of Many Tongues
	Donna-Michelle St. Bernard	Gas Girls
	Vern Thiessen	Lenin’s Embalmers
2012	Catherine Banks	It Is Solved by Walking	[64]
	Trina Davies	The Romeo Initiative	[65]
	Karen Hines	Drama: Pilot Episode
	Cathy Ostlere, Dennis Garnhum	Lost: A Memoir
	Anusree Roy	Brothel #9
2013	Nicolas Billon	Fault Lines: Three Plays	[66]
	Meg Braem	Blood: A Scientific Romance	[67]
	Kate Hewlett	The Swearing Jar
	Lawrence Jeffery	Frenchtown
	Joseph Jomo Pierre	Shakespeare's Nigga
2014	Jordan Tannahill	Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays	[68]
	Rick Chafe	The Secret Mask	[69]
	Sean Dixon	A God in Need of Help
	Janet Munsil	That Elusive Spark
2015	David Yee	carried away on the crest of a wave	[70]
	Beth Graham	The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble	[71]
	Tara Grammy, Tom Arthur Davis	Mahmoud
	Bryden MacDonald	Odd Ducks
	Marcus Youssef, James Long	Winners and Losers
2016	Colleen Murphy	Pig Girl	[72]
	Brad Fraser	Kill Me Now	[73]
	Donna-Michelle St. Bernard	A Man A Fish
	Jordan Tannahill	Concord Floral
	Mary Vingoe	Refuge
2017	Hiro Kanagawa	Indian Arm	[74]
	Robert Chafe	The Colony of Unrequited Dreams	[75]
	Anna Chatterton	Within the Glass
	Michael Healey	1979
	Kate Hennig	The Virgin Trial
2018	Jordan Tannahill	Botticelli in the Fire and Sunday in Sodom	[76]
	Keith Barker	This Is How We Got Here	[77]
	Anna Chatterton, Evalyn Parry, Karin Randoja	Gertrude and Alice
	Anosh Irani	The Men in White
	Erin Shields	Paradise Lost
2019	Amanda Parris	Other Side of the Game	[78]
	Kevin Loring	Thanks for Giving	[79]
	Hannah Moscovitch	What a Young Wife Ought to Know
	Sean Harris Oliver	The Fighting Season
	Tetsuro Shigematsu	1 Hour Photo

2020s

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
2020	Kim Senklip Harvey	Kamloopa: An Indigenous Matriarch Story	[80]
	Yolanda Bonnell	bug	[81]
	Christopher Cook	Quick Bright Things
	Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman	Guarded Girls
	Donna-Michelle St. Bernard	Sound of the Beast
2021	Hannah Moscovitch	Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes	[82]
	Falen Johnson	Two Indians	[83]
	Jivesh Parasram	Take d Milk, Nah?
	Paul David Power	Crippled
	Christine Quintana	Selfie
2022	Dorothy Dittrich	The Piano Teacher: A Healing Key	[84]
	Daniel Arnold, Darrell Dennis, Medina Hahn	Inheritance: a pick-the-path experience	[85]
	Robert Chafe	Everybody Just C@lm the F#ck Down
	Marjorie Chan	Lady Sunrise
	Ho Ka Kei (Jeff Ho)	Iphigenia and the Furies (On Taurian Land) & Antigone: 方
2023	Cliff Cardinal	As You Like It, A Radical Retelling	[86]
	Darla Contois	The War Being Waged	[87]
	Hiro Kanagawa	Forgiveness
	Suvendrini Lena	The Enchanted Loom
	Jordan Tannahill	Is My Microphone On?
2024	Caleigh Crow	There Is Violence and There Is Righteous Violence and There Is Death, or the Born-Again Crow	[88]
	Makram Ayache	The Green Line	[89]
	Scott Jones, Robert Chafe	I Forgive You
	Mishka Lavigne	Shorelines
	Pamela Mala Sinha	New

Multiple winners and nominees

2 Wins

• Catherine Banks
• John Mighton
• Colleen Murphy
• Morris Panych
• Sharon Pollock
• Jordan Tannahill
• Judith Thompson
• George F. Walker

6 Nominations

• Judith Thompson (2 wins)

5 Nominations

• Robert Chafe (1 win)
• Daniel MacIvor (1 win)
• Jason Sherman (1 win)

4 Nominations

• Wendy Lill
• Michael Healey (1 win)
• John Mighton (2 wins)
• Jordan Tannahill (2 wins)
• George F. Walker (2 wins)

3 Nominations

• Joan MacLeod (1 win)
• Hannah Moscovitch (1 win)
• Colleen Murphy (2 wins)
• Morris Panych (2 wins)
• Sharon Pollock (2 wins)
• Donna-Michelle St. Bernard

2 Nominations

• Catherine Banks (2 wins)
• Daniel Brooks (both with cowriters)
• Marjorie Chan
• Anna Chatterton (consecutive, 1 with cowriters)
• Marie Clements
• Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman
• Don Druick
• Brad Fraser
• Linda Griffiths
• Tomson Highway (consecutive)
• Karen Hines
• Maureen Hunter
• Anosh Irani
• Lawrence Jeffrey
• Hiro Kanagawa (1 win)
• John Krizanc (1 win)
• Kevin Loring (1 win)
• Bryden MacDonald
• Michael MacLennon (consecutive)
• Richard Sanger
• Erin Shields (1 win)
• Vern Thiessen (1 win)
• Guillermo Verdecchia (consecutive, 1 win)
• David Yee (1 win)
• David Young

Drew Hayden Taylor and Anosh Irani have also both been nominated for the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction.

James Reaney won the award three times before Poetry and Drama were split in 1981 into separate categories.

Mishka Lavigne is the first person to be nominated for both the English and French language awards for Drama.