Each winner of the 1982 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
| Guy Vanderhaeghe, Man Descending
|
- Alice Munro, The Moons of Jupiter
- Chris Scott, Antichthon
|-
| align="center"| Non-fiction
| Christopher Moore, Louisbourg Portraits: Life in an Eighteenth-Century Garrison Town