GGBooks winners announced
Joel Thomas Hynes, Graeme Wood, Hiro Kanagawa and Cherie Dimaline are among the winners of this year’s 2017 Governor General’s Literary Awards.
The Canada Council for the Arts made the announcement today, naming 14 winners published in English and French.
The recipients were culled from 70 finalists, and included both new and established authors, illustrators and translators.
They will be honoured at a ceremony Nov. 29 in Ottawa, where Governor General Julie Payette will present the awards.
“The 2017 GGBooks winners reflect the soaring literary ambitions of the writers, translators, illustrators and publishers,” said Simon Brault, the Canada Council director and CEO.
“They dispense the essential doses of Canadian imagination, fantasy, ideas, dreams and analysis that a growing number of readers are appreciating and celebrating.”
Hynes, from St. John’s, N. L., won in the fiction category for We’ll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night ( HarperCollins Publishers), while Wood, from Connecticut, won in the non- fiction category for The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State ( Random House/ Penguin Random House).
Port Moody, B. C., native Kanagawa took the award in drama for Indian Arm ( Playwrights Canada Press).
In the poetry category, Richard Harrison of Calgary came out on top for On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood ( Buckrider Books/ Wolsak and Wynn Publishers).
Young people’s literature was broken into two categories: In text, Toronto native Dimaline won for The Marrow Thieves ( Dancing Cat Books/ Cormorant Books); in illustrated books, David Alexander Robertson of Winnipeg and Julie Flett of Vancouver scored for When We Were Alone ( HighWater Press).
And in the translation from French to English category, Readopolis by Montreal’s Oana Avasilichioaei ( a translation of Lectodôme by Bertrand Laverdure, published by Le Quartanier) found the top spot. It is published by BookThug.
The French- language winners included the following: Le poids de la neige ( La Peuplade) by Christian Guay- Poliquin in fiction; La main hantée ( Éditions du Noroît) by Louise Dupré in poetry; Dimanche napalm ( Leméac Éditeur) by Sébastien David in drama; Les Yeux tristes de mon camion ( Les Éditions du Boréal) by Serge Bouchard in non- fiction.
In the French- language young people’s literature categories, L’importance de Mathilde Poisson ( Bayard Canada) by Véronique Drouin won in text, while Azadah ( Les Éditions de la Pastèque) by Jacques Goldstyn won in illustrated books.
Finally, in the translation from English to French category, the winner was Un barbare en Chine nouvelle ( Les Éditions du Boréal) by Daniel Poliquin. It is a translation of Barbarian Lost: Travels in the New China ( HarperCollins Publishers) by Alexandre Trudeau.