AND THE WINNERS ARE ...

The Governor General’s Awards, founded in 1936, are among the country’s oldest literary honours.

English and French awards are handed out in seven categories with the winners receiving $25,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, which administers the prizes.

This year’s prize for non-fiction went to Darrel J. McLeod of Sooke, B.C., for his debut Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age (Douglas & McIntyre), which judges hailed as an intimate examination of gender fluidity, familial violence and cultural hybridity told with “phoenix-like strength.”

Cecily Nicholson of Burnaby, B.C., won the poetry award for Wayside Sang (Talonbooks), which offers a discursive look at the migration of the black diaspora near the border between Windsor, Ont., and Detroit.

Ottawa-born Jordan Tannahill, who relocated to Toronto in his teens and later to London (U.K.), won the honour in the drama category for his reimagining of art history with Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom (Playwrights Canada Press).

In the young people’s literature category, the text award went to Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster (Puffin Canada), by Vancouver-born, Pittsburgh-based Jonathan Auxier. Toronto’s Jillian Tamaki won the illustrated book award for They Say Blue (Groundwood Books).

The English translation honour went to Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott in Montreal for Descent into Night (Mawenzi House Publishers) by Edem Awumey.

The awards will be presented Nov. 28 in a ceremony presided over by Gov. Gen. Julie Payette in Ottawa.