TORONTO — Toronto author Kate Cayley has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction for her debut novel Property. The Canada Council for the Arts announced the 14 English and French winners on Tuesday, with each winner receiving $25,000. Cayley’s novel follows characters in the city’s west end over a spring day as their lives become interconnected following a death. The award is the second major prize for Property this week, after it also won the $20,000 Toronto Book Award.
Cayley said the prize feels like finding yourself “in one of your own daydreams.” She said she feels “incredibly lucky and grateful” to be recognized by one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious literary awards. “These kinds of awards mean that you keep writing,” she said. “That you feel both supported in your writing, recognized by your peers, and also that the fact that it’s monetary means that you can kind of just keep going.”
The non-fiction winner is Whitehorse-based author Trina Moyles for her memoir Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival. The book explores her evolving attitudes toward black bears alongside her relationship with her late brother. The drama award goes to playwright Jordan Tannahill for his play Prince Faggot, set in a future where Prince George, the eldest son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, is a gay man. This is the third Governor General’s Literary Award for the 38-year-old playwright, who also won the drama prize in 2014 and 2018. Tannahill said winning another Governor General’s Literary prize is a “profound honour.” “I’m in a different place in my life now than when I won it back in 2018 or 2014,” he said of his wins for plays Age of Minority and Botticelli in the Fire. “It sort of feels like it’s a kind of really profound validation from my peers, from the theatre community, about what I’m up to at this moment in time in my writing.”
The poetry award goes to Montreal author Gillian Sze for An Orange, A Syllable, which focuses on motherhood, language and art. The young people’s text award was won by Saskatchewan author Kristy Jackson for Touching Grass, illustrated by Rhael McGregor, about a young gamer sent to a Dene First Nation culture camp. Matthew Forsythe of Montreal received the young people’s illustrated books award for Aggie and the Ghost. The French-to-English translation award goes to Katia Grubisic for Together by the Sea by Marie-Claire Blais.
Cayley, who is also a poet and playwright, said Property was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, calling it “almost a rewriting” of the classic stream-of-consciousness novel. “I kind of wanted to write a novel in which you are really feeling the weight of the kind of ordinary interior,” said Cayley, who began writing the novel in 2022 during a COVID-19 lockdown. She also called it a “very Toronto book” and said it was inspired “partly by a rat infestation in my house.” “Rats are a big part of this novel,” said Cayley, who calls the city’s west end home. Tannahill said Prince Faggot, which he wrote in 2020 while living in London, was initially inspired by a 2017 photograph of a young Prince George. He said the photos were a jumping off point to “meditate on this idea of queer childhood” and “give language to this, particularly at a time in which the very idea of this is such a kind of volatile, politically volatile discourse.” The photos led to a fictionalized narrative of the heir identifying as a gay man that “really resembled very much my own (life) and very much the struggle that I went through as a gay man,” Tannahill said.
As for the play’s title, Tannahill said it came to him very early in the creation process. He referred to its name as an invitation “for an audience to consider their relationship with that word.” “And I’m not offended if people say the title and I also understand if they don’t,” he said. The winners and finalists are chosen by a peer assessment committee for each category.