Nisga’a writer Jordan Abel’s debut novel, Empty Spaces, has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for English-language fiction. The B.C. writer’s book is one of 14 – seven English, seven French – to earn top honours and $25,000. 

Empty Spaces is a fresh, urban answer to James Fenimore Cooper’s 19th-century work, The Last of the Mohicans. Abel, a Vancouver-born associate professor at the University of Alberta, challenges mainstream narratives about what it means to be Indigenous and explores his community’s connection to land, heritage and diaspora through a unique style of storytelling that eschews dialogue and characters. 

“Abel’s compelling and hypnotic prose,” judges wrote, “with its reverse beginnings, repetition, rewriting and revision, feels like settling into a hot spring that grounds the reader in the present moment.”

The theme of indigeneity continued in the non-fiction category, where Niigaan Sinclair won for Wînipêk, an innovative history of Manitoba’s capital told through his newspaper columns. The University of Manitoba professor in the Indigenous Studies department – who sat down with Zoomer in June – was lauded by the review committee for his “profound, difficult and expansive” work.

Sinclair wasn’t the only Winnipeg-based writer to take home a prize: Scientific Marvel, by Winnipeg’s poet laureate Chimwemwe Undi, earned the top spot in the poetry category. The collection draws from a wide range of inspirations – including case law – en route to exploring what it means to belong.

The Governor General’s Literary Awards were established in 1937; past winners include Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje and Alice Munro.

For a full list of this year’s winners and finalists, visit ggbooks.ca.