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.
English
{|class="wikitable" width="100%"
!width=15%|Category
!width=30%|Winner
!width=55%|Nominated
|-
| align="center"| Fiction
| Jack Hodgins, The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne
|
- Margaret Atwood, Life Before Man
- Matt Cohen, The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone
|-
| align="center"| Non-fiction
| Maria Tippett, Emily Carr