Each winner of the 1981 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit was selected by a panel of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts.
The 1981 awards were the first time that separate awards were presented for poetry and drama, which had previously competed in a single "poetry or drama" category.
English
{|class="wikitable" width="100%"
!width=15%|Category
!width=30%|Winner
!width=55%|Nominated
|-
| align="center"| Fiction
| Mavis Gallant, Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories
|
No advance shortlist was released for this category.
|-
| align="center"| Non-fiction
| George Calef, Caribou and the Barren-Lands
|
- Claude Bissell, The Young Vincent Massey
- Elspeth Cameron, Hugh MacLennan: A Writer's Life
|-
| align="center"| Poetry
| F. R. Scott, The Collected Poems of F. R. Scott
|
- Alfred Bailey, Miramichi Lightning: Collected Poems
- Barry McKinnon, The The
|-
| align="center"| Drama
| Sharon Pollock, Blood Relations
|
- Charles Tidler, Straight Ahead and Blind Dancers
- George F. Walker, Theatre of the Film Noir
|}
French
{|class="wikitable" width="100%"
!width=15%|Category
!width=30%|Winner
!width=55%|Nominated
|-
| align="center"| Fiction
| Denys Chabot, La province lunaire
|
- Noël Audet, Ah, l'amour l'amour
- Aline Beaudin Beaupré, L'aventure de Blanche Morti
- Louis Caron, Le canard de bois
|-
| align="center"| Non-fiction
| Madeleine Ouellette-Michalska, L'échappée des discours de l'oeil
|
- Maurice Cusson, Délinquants pourquoi?
- Andrée Pilon-Quiviger, L'éden éclaté
|-
| align="center"| Poetry
| Michel Beaulieu, Visages
|
No advance shortlist was released for this category.
|-
| align="center"| Drama
| Marie Laberge, C'était avant la guerre à l'anse à Gilles
|
- Jean-Pierre Ronfard, Vie et mort du Roi Boiteux
|}