Another day, another lit awards list. Or at least that's how it seems at this time of year. Here at 49th Shelf, we're pretty happy with these lists, short and long, which put the spotlight on books and writers we've been looking out for lately. The following lists and posts will take you deeper inside some of the biggest books of the year. 

Sandra Djwa has been nominated for the Governor-General's Award for Non-Fiction for her biography of P.K. Page, A Journey With No Maps. Check out her interview from February about the life of Page and her own work as biographer. 

Shyam Selvadurai's The Hungry Ghosts is nominated for the Governor-General's Award for Fiction, and also made an appearance on our Canadian Immigrant Writers list this summer. 

We talked to Alan Smutylo about travel painting and his book The Memory of Water last spring, before it was nominated a Banff Mountain Book Award and the Governor-General's Award for Non-Fiction. 

We've also got a great conversation with Priscila Uppal, whose memoir Projection: Encounters With My Runaway Mother has been nominated for both the Weston Prize and the Governor-General's Award. 

Lisa Moore's Caught turns up on both the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller lists this year. Last summer, she spoke with us about themes of freedom and transformation in her novel.

The protagonist of Lynn Coady's Giller-nominated 2011 novel The Antagonist turned up on Billie Livingston's list of Great Literary Drunks. We're confident that more than a few characters in Coady's new short story collection Hellgoing, nominated for the both the Rogers Prize and the Giller, would also fit in well on Livingston's list!

Elisabeth di Mariaffi's How to Get Along With Women was long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. She was also part of our holiday #LitWishList campaign, with Three Bite-Sized Books to Fill You Up. 

This Great Escape: The Case of Michael Paryla has been nominated for the Weston Prize. Its author Andrew Steinmetz told us all about the origins of his book, built around his obsession with a movie clip and a distant cousin. 

Bread and Bone by Saleema Nawaz is up for the Quebec Writers' Federation Fiction Prize. In June, she provided us with the lovely essay "Why I'm Glad I Didn't Write the Books I've Loved the Most." 

And one more list we're really excited about is Contenders Too, which asserts that great books exist beyond the prize lists. If you want to nominate a title for this list, leave a suggestion on the page's comments. We'd love to hear it!