Governor General’s literary prizes name victors

We’ll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night by Newfoundland writer and actor Joel Thomas Hynes has won the high-profile fiction portion of the Governor General’s Literary Awards.

His book was called “an act of fullthrottle imagination and narrative invention . . . unforgettable, tragic and ultimately transcendent” by the category judges.

The nonfiction prize was captured by Graeme Wood for The Way of the Strangers: Encounters with the Islamic State.

There 14 winners overall, seven each in English and French. Each winner receives $25,000. Each of the shortlisted finalists receives $1,000, while the publishers of the winning books receive $3,000 to help with promotion costs.

Toronto writer Cherie Dimaline won for Young People’s Literature, Text, for The Marrow Thieves, which is also shortlisted for the prestigious and, at $50,000, lucrative Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature to be announced later this week.

The panel called her book “speculative fiction with a chilling immediacy.”

The poetry award was captured by Calgary writer Richard Harrison for the evocatively titled On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood, published by Hamilton, Ont., small press Buckrider Books.

Winner of the drama prize was Hiro Kanagawa, from Port Moody, B.C., for Indian Arm, published by Playwrights Canada Press.

Also included in the English-language list were: When We Were Alone by David Alexander Robertson and Julie Flett, published by HighWater Press, which took the Young People’s Literature, Illustrated Books prize. Translation (from French to English) went to Montreal’s Oana Avasilichioaei for Readopolis, a translation of Lectodome by Bertrand Laverdure.

Go to gg.books.ca for a full list of winners.

Winners will be presented with their prizes in a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Nov. 29. Deborah Dundas