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.
| Category | Winner | Nominated |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction |  Mavis Gallant, Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories | No advance shortlist was released for this category. [1] |
| Non-fiction | George Calef, Caribou and the Barren-Lands |
|
| Poetry | F. R. Scott, The Collected Poems of F. R. Scott |
|
| Drama | Sharon Pollock, Blood Relations |
|
| Category | Winner | Nominated |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction | Denys Chabot, La province lunaire |
|
| Non-fiction | Madeleine Ouellette-Michalska, L'échappée des discours de l'oeil |
|
| Poetry | Michel Beaulieu, Visages | No advance shortlist was released for this category. |
| Drama | Marie Laberge, C'était avant la guerre à l'anse à Gilles |
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