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A story featuring God considering the first draft of his creation, and a memoir told partly in English and partly in Ojibway have each won prestigious Governor General’s Literary Awards, it was announced Wednesday morning, among a total of 14 English- and French-language winners.
Toronto writer Sheila Heti claims the 2022 award for fiction for her novel “Pure Colour,” published by Knopf Canada.
“It’s the first time I’ve gotten an award in Canada, so it felt very special,” Heti said in an interview. “And I’m so happy it’s for this book … I don’t think that it’s a book that necessarily three people would agree on. So it was nice that three people agreed on it.”
The non-fiction prize goes to Ojibway writer Eli Baxter of London, Ont., for his memoir “Aki-wayn-zih: A Person as Worthy as the Earth,” published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.
“This award is an exceptional honour to me and my family,” wrote Baxter in an email. “In many ways it validates my search for meaning with regard to my personal history in the residential school system. In a larger sense, this story encompasses the many experiences of other residential school survivors. It is my hope to inspire more stories of this nature.”
In total there are seven categories in each of English and French, making for 14 winners. The other categories are: poetry, drama, young people’s literature, text; young people’s literature, illustrated book; and translation, French to English, or English to French.
Each writer, translator or illustrator whose book is selected as the best in Canada by a three-person “peer assessment committee” receives a $25,000 prize. Their publishers receive $3,000 to promote the winning book and the other finalists in each category receive $1,000 — there were, in total, 70 finalists over the 14 categories.
The other English-language winners are:
- Poetry goes to Halifax writer Annick MacAskill for “Shadow Blight,” published by Gaspereau Press.
- Drama goes to Vancouver writer Dorothy Dittrich for “The Piano Teacher: A Healing Key,” published by Talonbooks.
- Young people’s literature, text, goes to “The Summer of Bitter and Sweet” by Jen Ferguson, published by Heartdrum/HarperCollins.
- Young people’s literature, illustrated book is “The Sour Cherry Tree” by Toronto’s Naseem Hrab and Montreal’s Nahid Kazemi, published by Owlkids.
- The translated book award (from French to English) goes to “History of the Jews in Quebec,” translated by Montreal’s Judith Weisz Woodsworth and published by the University of Ottawa Press. It is a translation of “Histoire des Juifs du Québec” by Pierre Anctil.
The Governor General’s Literary Awards were founded in 1936. In 1959, the Canada Council for the Arts took over the funding and administering of the prize which, this year, saw a total of $450,000 awarded to the winners and their publishers, and the other finalists in each category.
Before the pandemic, winners of the awards were invited to Ottawa for a series of events, including an awards presentation at Rideau Hall, the residence of the Governor General of Canada. This year the Canada Council is still working on the best way to hold celebratory events for those cancelled or disrupted due to the pandemic.
Lists of all the winners and finalists in English and French can be found at ggbooks.ca.
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