Each winner of the 1979 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit was selected by a panel of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. The 1979 awards were the first for which a shortlist of finalists was released a month before the presentation of the awards.
| width=15% | Category | width=30% | Winner | width=55% | Nominated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fiction | Jack Hodgins, The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne |
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| Non-fiction | Maria Tippett, Emily Carr |
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| Poetry or drama | Michael Ondaatje, There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do |
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| width=15% | Category | width=30% | Winner | width=55% | Nominated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fiction | Marie-Claire Blais, Le Sourd dans la ville |
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| Non-fiction | Dominique Clift and Sheila McLeod Arnopoulos, Le fait anglais au Québec |
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| Poetry or drama | Robert Melançon, Peinture aveugle |
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