Each winner of the 1980 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit was selected by a panel of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts.
English
{|class="wikitable" width="100%"
!width=15%|Category
!width=30%|Winner
!width=55%|Nominated
|-
| align="center"| Fiction
| George Bowering, Burning Water
|
- Susan Musgrave, The Charcoal Burners
- Leon Rooke, Fat Woman
|-
| align="center"| Non-fiction
| Jeffrey Simpson, Discipline of Power: The Conservative Interlude and the Liberal Restoration