The Canada Council for the Arts has announced the finalists for the 2008 Governor General's Literary Awards. The finalists include authors from ages 28 to 77, several previous finalists and three first-time finalists who are journalists. The awards are in the categories of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, children's literature (text and illustration) and translation.

A total of 1,469 books were nominated for this year's awards. Thirty-two of the 73 finalists are nominated for the first time. At least nine of the finalists are under the age of 35. The themes of mortality, war and place figure prominently in several of the books.

The names of the English-language finalists and the titles of their works are listed below, together with the juries' citations for each work. 

Canada Council for the Arts funds, administers and promotes the Governor General's Literary Awards. Each winner will receive $25,000 and a specially-bound copy of the winning book. The publisher of each winning book will receive $3,000 to support promotional activities. Non-winning finalists will each receive $1,000 in recognition of their selection as finalists, bringing the total value of the Awards to approximately $450,000.

The winners will be announced on Tuesday, Nov. 18 at 10 a.m. EST at the McCord Museum of Canadian History in Montreal.

Fiction

Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen (HarperCollins)

Atmospheric Disturbances is a poignant and very funny journey inside a mistaken mind. A writer with tremendous sympathy and psychological acuity, Rivka Galchen is possessed of a wonderfully sly, magnificently skewed sense of humour. A brilliant debut.

Cockroach by Rawi Hage (House of Anansi Press)

Rawi Hage's Cockroach is a savagely intelligent examination of contemporary multicultural Canada. Humorous and heartbreaking, this novel shines a fierce, brilliant light on the immigrant experience in this country. A mad tour-de-force in a fresh and original voice.

The young searching protagonist of Nino Ricci's The Origin of Species takes us into the now distant world of the post-Trudeau 1980s. Set mostly in Montreal, with an illuminating voyage to the Galápagos at its centre, this exquisite novel is both tough and tender and, in the end, confirms our belief in the resilience of the human heart.

The Lost Highway by David Adams Richards (Doubleday Canada)

The Lost Highway is an intimate and compelling psychological portrait of a lost soul. David Adams Richards writes with an overarching humanity that points to our foibles with sympathy and humour. His open, honest and supple prose creates a world we at once recognize and see anew.

The Great Karoo by Fred Stenson (Doubleday Canada)

No one writes about cowboys, horses, landscape and the military quite like Fred Stenson. Here is the humour, humanity and insight that can only come from an author who knows what he's talking about. A true-hearted book about Canadians caught up in the dark cause of the Boer War.

Poetry

Noise from the Laundry by Weyman Chan (Talonbooks)

Chan's poetry takes us through a breathtaking range of encounters, filled with sly wit, sparkling linguistic turns, and an astonishing youthful clarity about the complexities of the contemporary human project.

The Sentinel by A. F. Moritz (House of Anansi Press)

The circumstances of being fully human are the hallmark of Moritz's work - carried out with erudition and compassion for the human journey. Sources of many literatures combine in a unique voice that is both pan-American and global.

The Invisibility Exhibit by Sachiko Murakami (Talonbooks)

Murakami's poems take us into the heart of Vancouver's Downtown East Side. Her words - eloquent, stark and bold - tackle the silences surrounding Vancouver's "missing women." This collection is a must read. Each poem harbours its own life.

Aide-Memoire by Ruth Roach Pierson (BuschekBooks)

Aide-Memoire is sophisticated, witty, tender, grieving, ironic, cunning, open-eyed, open-hearted. The poems take us through a lifetime of memories, reflections, and imaginative engagements, traversing several continents and ages, without ever losing their fierce, intimate, ecstatic connection to our common humanity and the living green world, close-up, and all at once, nested among wheeling stars.

More to Keep Us Warm by Jacob Scheier (ECW Press)

Scheier's young voice urgently questions every cultural convention, every truth. The poems are infused with humour, irony, intelligence, wit, grief, and above all, love.

Drama

Bone Cage by Catherine Banks (Playwrights Canada Press)

A big play about tough lives in rural Nova Scotia. Bone Cage puts these lives under the microscope and scrutinizes them with piercing intelligence. The play resonates far beyond its rural setting to probe the struggles and hopes of people everywhere, particularly those trapped in dead-end jobs. At times it's a struggle to dream. This play spans history and is a play for today - tragic, funny, nuanced and poetic.

10 Days on Earth by Ronnie Burkett (Playwrights Canada Press)

Ronnie Burkett's 10 Days on Earth unsentimentally explores the ache of loneliness. A middle-aged, intellectually-challenged man continues to live with his dead mother, not realizing she has passed in her sleep. Amazingly, this play doesn't dip into sadness. Rather, it celebrates our ability to survive tragedy, touching readers with beautiful imagery and powerful poetry.

Reverend Jonah by Paul Ciufo (J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing)

When public opinion in rural Ontario drives a lesbian from the comfort and support of the church she loves, a young minister in his first pastoral charge must search his soul for honour, justice and truth. Paul Ciufo debates questions of faith and spirit in a secular, commerce-driven world. His power of observation is revealed in nuanced characters whose opposing, deeply-held values drive the play.

Copper Thunderbird by Marie Clements (Talonbooks)

Marie Clements is a vibrant and important voice in Canadian theatre because of her imagination and command of language. Her theatre technique and imagery are surprising, brilliant and sometimes upsetting. The playwright portrays the art and life of Norval Morisseau, the "Father of Contemporary Native Art." In Copper Thunderbird, images, lines and colours intermingle as if seen through the energy lines of his paintings. Often angry, never sentimental, this play deserves a wide audience.

Palace of the End by Judith Thompson (Playwrights Canada Press)

Moving beyond the political, Palace of the End presents the lives of three people connected to present-day Iraq. This play uses specific, sensory details to create characters that are as complex as the country that haunts them. Judith Thompson is wise about universal truths and writes convincingly about a contemporary quagmire. The play's wallop comes from its power to speak about pain.

Non-fiction

Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army by Christie Blatchford (Doubleday Canada)

The stories of the men and women who fight in wars are seldom told. This illuminating book ensures the soldiers serving and dying in Afghanistan are not reduced to mere numbers in the war of words that attends the most debated deployment in modern Canadian history.

God’s Mercies: Rivalry, Betrayal and the Dream of Discovery by Douglas Hunter (Doubleday Canada)

This original book takes the stuff of the exploration narrative, a tale many times told, and makes it new and compelling. By bringing 17th-century rivals Henry Hudson and Samuel de Champlain together onto the same canvas, Hunter creates a memorable, suspense-filled and elegantly-written drama.

The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek by Sid Marty (McClelland & Stewart)

Sid Marty's The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek is a profoundly moving story about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. This meticulous reconstruction of real-world events nonetheless moves at the pace of a great crime novel. While the story of a single bear forms the heart of the narrative, the book also embraces complex ecological, economic and social dynamics.

An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-first Century by James Orbinski (Doubleday Canada)

This book offers a poignant first-hand perspective on modern humanitarian action. Based on Orbinski's work with Medecins Sans Frontieres, the book addresses the troubling questions that haunt those who dwell on the uneasy frontline where human misery intersects with global politics.

The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need by Chris Turner (Random House of Canada)

Chris Turner brings his perspective as a young parent to this vision of how the future might unfold if we pay attention to ingenuity, invention and audacity in design and urban planning. Turner's exuberance and superb journalistic instincts make this book on climate change unique.

Children's Literature - Text

Libertad by Alma Fullerton (Fitzhenry & Whiteside)

The Landing by John Ibbitson (Kids Can Press)

Shimmerdogs by Dianne Linden (Thistledown Press)

Child of Dandelions by Shenaaz Nanji (Second Story Press)

Skim by Mariko Tamaki (Groundwood Books)

Children’s Literature – Illustration

My Letter to the World and Other Poems by Isabelle Arsenault (Kids Can Press)

The Emperor’s Second Hand Clothes by Josee Bisaillon (Smith, Bonappetit & Son)

Yellow Moon, Apple Moon by Matt James (Groundwood Books)

The Owl and the Pussycat by Stéphane Jorisch (Kids Can Press)

Shin-chi’s Canoe by Kim LaFave (Groundwood Books)