The latest winners of one of Canada's most venerable arts honours, the Governor General's Literary Awards, will be unveiled in Toronto today.

The Canada Council for the Arts, which administers the annual literary prize, will announce winning English- and French-language writers in seven categories.

The 2013 English-language nominees are:

  • Fiction: Kenneth Bonert (Toronto) for The Lion Seeker; Joseph Boyden (New Orleans) for The Orenda; Eleanor Catton (Iowa City, Iowa) for The Luminaries; Colin McAdam (Toronto) for A Beautiful Truth; Shyam Selvadurai (Toronto) for The Hungry Ghosts.
  • Poetry: Austin Clarke (Toronto) for Where The Sun Shines Best; Adam Dickinson (St. Catharines, Ont.) for The Polymers; Don Domanski (Halifax) for Bite Down Little Whisper; Russell Thornton (Vancouver) for Birds, Metals, Stones & Rain; Katherena Vermette (Winnipeg) for North End Love Songs.
  • Drama: Nicolas Billon (Montreal) for Fault Lines; Meg Braem (Calgary) for Blood: A Scientific Romance; Kate Hewlett (Stratford, Ont.) for The Swearing Jar; Lawrence Jeffery (Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.) for Frenchtown; Joseph Jomo Pierre (Toronto) for Shakespeare's Nigga.
  • Non-fiction: Carolyn Abraham (Toronto) for The Juggler's Children: A Journey into Family, Legend and the Genes that Bind Us; Sandra Djwa (Vancouver) for Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page; Nina Munk (New York) for The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty; Allen Smutylo (Wiarton, Ont.) for The Memory of Water; Priscila Uppal (Toronto) for Projection.
  • Children's Literature — Text: Beverley Brenna (Saskatoon) for The White Bicycle; Shane Peacock (Baltimore, Ont.) for Becoming Holmes: The Boy Sherlock Holmes, His Final Case; Jean E. Pendziwol (Thunder Bay, Ont.) for Once Upon a Northern Night; Valerie Sherrard (Miramichi, N.B.) for Counting Back From Nine; Teresa Toten (Toronto) for The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B.
  • Children's Literature — Illustration: Rachel Berman (Toronto) for Miss Mousie's Blind Date, text by Tim Beiser; Gary Clement (Toronto) for Oy, Feh, So?, text by Cary Fagan; Matt James (Toronto) for Northwest Passage, text by Stan Rogers; Jon Klassen (Los Angeles) for The Dark, text by Lemony Snicket; Julie Morstad (Vancouver) for How To, text by Julie Morstad.
  • Translation – French to English: Robert Majzels (Calgary) for For Sure, English translation of Pour sûr by France Daigle; Rhonda Mullins (Montreal) for And the Birds Rained Down, English translation of Il pleuvait des oiseaux by Jocelyne Saucier; George Tombs (Montreal) for Canada's Forgotten Slaves: Two Hundred Years of Bondage, English translation of Deux siècles d'esclavage au Québec by Marcel Trudel; Luise von Flotow (Ottawa) for The Stalinist's Wife, English translation of La femme du stalinien by France Théoret; Donald Winkler (Montreal) for The Major Verbs, English translation of Les verbes majeurs by Pierre Nepveu.

The winner of each category receives $25,000 as well as a specially bound copy of his or her book. Remaining finalists receive $1,000 each.