CanLit heavyweights among Governor General finalists

The latest writings from the likes of Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood and M.G. Vassanji will vie for the 2007 Governor General's Literary Awards.

The cash prize for Canada's oldest literary honour has been augmented this year in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Canada Council for the Arts, which administers the annual awards.

Each winner of the 14 different categories will receive $25,000, council director Robert Sirman said Tuesday morning at the downtown Toronto nominee announcement.

Acclaimed Toronto-based authors Michael Ondaatje and M.G. Vassanji are among the English-language fiction finalists, for Divisadero and The Assassin's Song respectively. Both were also among the recently announced 2007 Giller Prize nominees.

Their GG competition includes fellow Toronto writer Barbara Gowdy for her novel Helpless, Vancouver's David Chariandy for Soucouyant and Montreal's Heather O'Neill, author of Lullabies for Little Criminals.

Wide-ranging, high-quality submissions: juror

For award-winning author Austin Clarke, one of this year's English-language fiction jurors, reading through more than 150 titles was exciting because of the variety and quality of the submissions.

"In this group, the standard was so good that we could easily have had a short list of 15 [instead of five]," Clarke told CBCNews.ca.

"It was like an education because you are travelling across the country, you are reading about things that happen in other parts of the country that you might not have visited," he added.

"I was reading critically and also reading as a writer would read another writer to see what tricks [he or she] is up to."

The non-fiction finalists include a biography of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau and a portrait of AIDS victims in Africa by a national newspaper journalist. The nominees are:

• Enter the Babylon System: Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent, Rodrigo Bascunan and Christian Pearce, Toronto.
• Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Volume One: 1919-1968, John English, Kitchener, Ont.
• 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa, Stephanie Nolen, Johannesburg.
• I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad, Karolyn Smardz Frost, Collingwood, Ont.
• Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World's Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them, Bridget Stutchbury, Woodbridge, Ont.

Atwood, one of Canada's literary icons, is among this year's GG English-language poetry nominees for her The Door: Poems, joining fellow Toronto poet Dennis Lee, a finalist for Yesno: Poems.

Rounding out the category are Halifax poet Don Domanski (All Our Wonder Unavenged), Kitchener, Ont.'s Brian Henderson (Nerve Language) and Rob Winger of Ottawa (Muybridge's Horse: A Poem in Three Phases ).

Fresh off a win Monday night at the Canadian Children's Literary Awards, Winnipeg author Eva Wiseman said she was thrilled that her latest novel Kanada also garnered a nod in the GG award category for children's literature, text.

The book, a Second World War tale about a young Jewish girl sent to Auschwitz, is based on first-person accounts of the Nazi concentration camp from two survivors: Wiseman's 95-year-old father and mother, who died nearly a decade ago.

"Recognition by your peers is very sweet, but I also think my book is about a topic that kids should know about," Wiseman said after Tuesday's announcement.

"I go into schools quite often to talk and kids don't know too much about [the Holocaust] but they're fascinated by the topic and what happened. I think kids have a sense of fair play and they're just horrified that something like that happened," she said.

Wiseman's GG competitors include Toronto's Hugh Brewster (Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose: The story of a Painting); Christopher Paul Curtis of Windsor, Ont. (Elijah of Buxton); Iain Lawrence of Gabriola Island, B.C. (Gemini Summer) and John Wilson of Lantzville, B.C. (The Alchemist's Dream ).

Other English-language nominees include:

• Children's literature, illustration: The Painted Circus, Wallace Edwards (Yarker, Ont.); The Blue Hippopotamus, Joanne Fitzgerald (Orton, Ont.); Marja's Skis, Jirina Marton (Toronto); My New Shirt, Dusan Petricic (Toronto); The Boy from the Sun, Duncan Weller (Thunder Bay, Ont.).
• Drama: In Gabriel's Kitchen, Salvatore Antonio (Markham, Ont.); The Bombay Plays, Anosh Irani (North Vancouver); Leo, Rosa Laborde (Toronto); The December Man, Colleen Murphy (Toronto); What Lies Before Us, Morris Panych (Vancouver).
• Translation, French to English: Sheila Fischman for My Sister's Blue Eyes (Montreal); Robert Majzels and Erin Mour for Notebook of Roses and Civilization (Calgary, Montreal); Rhonda Mullins for The Decline of the Hollywood Empire (Montreal); John Murrell for Carole Frchette: Two Plays: John and Beatrice; Helen's Necklace (Calgary); Nigel Spencer for Augustino and the Choir of Destruction (Sherbrooke, Que.)

CBC Newscorrespondent Michel Cormier is among the French-language nominees, givena nod in thenon-fiction category for his La Russie des illusions: Regard d'un correspondant.A complete list of French-language nominees is available on the Canada Council website.

As in recent years, some of the finalists will participate in readings over the next few weeks, including an appearance by the English-language fiction nominees at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto on Monday.

The winners in the seven French and seven English categories will be announced Nov. 27 in Montreal.

The 14 winners will deliver a public reading at the Library and Archives Canada Auditorium in Ottawa on Dec. 12 and officially receive their awards from Governor General Michlle Jean at a Rideau Hall gala Dec. 13.