Each winner of the 1983 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
| Leon Rooke, Shakespeare's Dog
|
- Philip Kreiner, People Like Us in a Place Like This
- H. R. Percy, Painted Ladies
- Susan Swan, The Biggest Modern Woman of the World
|-
| align="center"| Non-fiction
| Jeffery Williams, Byng of Vimy
|
- Ken Dryden, The Game
- H. S. Ferns, Reading from Left to Right: One Man's Political History
|-
| align="center"| Poetry
| David Donnell, Settlements
|
- Christopher Dewdney, Predators of the Adoration: Selected Poems 1972-82
- Don McKay, Birding, or Desire
- Anne Szumigalski, Doctrine of Signatures
|-
| align="center"| Drama
| Anne Chislett, Quiet in the Land
|
No advance shortlist was released for this category.
|}
French
{|class="wikitable" width="100%"
!width=15%|Category