Niigaan Sinclair, Jordan Abel among winners of Governor General’s Literary Awards

The Canada Council for the Arts announced winners across seven categories, in both official languages. The writers, translators and illustrators of winning books receive $25,000.

When Niigaan Sinclair pitched his collection of articles to a Toronto publisher, he was told “Wînipêk: Visions of Canada from an Indigenous Centre” was a “regional book.”

The Winnipeg-based Anishinaabe columnist and editor recalls being told to expect scant attention outside major urban centres, so he wasn’t surprised to see “like 80 per cent” of his sales come from Manitoba, northwestern Ontario and Saskatchewan.

But on Wednesday, Sinclair was assured the book had indeed resonated well beyond its geographical setting, winning the Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction.

“They didn’t even do book launches for me in the rest of the country. And then boom, this all kind of hits. I think the country’s responded,” Sinclair says from Winnipeg in a video call.

Sinclair makes an estimable list announced Wednesday morning that includes fiction winner Jordan Abel of Edmonton for the allegorical novel “Empty Spaces,” and poetry winner Chimwemwe Undi of Winnipeg for “Scientific Marvel.”

Abel, a queer Nisga’a writer from Vancouver, says he suspected the unusual approach he took for his debut novel would pose a barrier to some audiences. “Empty Spaces” contains no characters nor dialogue in its examination of Indigenous relationships with lands, displacement and diaspora. Winning the fiction prize put those concerns to rest.

“This award is incredibly affirming, you know, in that (this book has) done good things in the world, people are interested in it. Not everyone’s afraid of the difficulty and that’s a really good feeling,” Abel says from Edmonton, where he’s an associate professor in English at the University of Alberta.

“All writing is political, and I think this book is deeply political. So I was hoping for that, or at least hoping for an opening of a conversation. And it is tough from an author’s perspective to figure out whether or not that happens but I hope that it has and that there are conversations that continue out of this book.”