The English-language books that won the 2019 Governor General's Literary Awards all feature humans in search of something — some hidden truth or life's purpose or lost entity, and they move forward unfazed by how daunting the task at hand is. In other words, they are all people on a mission.

CBC Books asked each three of the winners — fiction winner Joan Thomas, nonfiction winner Don Gillmor and children's literature winner Erin Bow — to reflect further on the theme of mission in original works.

This is Mission, a special series presented in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts. Read on for links to these pieces.

On Dec. 30, 2019 at 8 p.m. (8:30 p.m. NT), listen to a special episode on this series from CBC Radio's Ideas.

Three Canadian writers read and reflect on the theme of troubled missions: Joan Thomas on her childhood as an evangelical Christian, Erin Bow on the self-sacrificing dedication of scientists, and Don Gillmor on the whys of suicide. All are winners of 2019 Governor General’s Awards.*Originally broadcast on Dec. 30, 2019. 53:59

Called is an original essay by Joan Thomas, the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award winner for fiction. (Ben Shannon/CBC)

In this essay, Called, Joan Thomas reflects on her religious upbringing and her childhood spent warning non-believers of the apocalyptic hell that awaited them. She now looks back in regret and thinks about how climate change — not God — is the force speeding earth to the end of times.

Thomas won the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction for her novel Five Wives.

She is the author of three previous novels: Read by Lightning, Curiosity and The Opening Sky.

Suicide's Citizens is an original essay by the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award winner for nonfiction. (Ben Shannon/CBC)

In Don Gillmor's essay, Suicide's Citizens, he reveals how a life touched by suicide is forever changed. Gillmor describes becoming a citizen of this new foreign land, a place you can be yanked to without warning and always has you questioning, why did they do it?

Gillmor won the Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction for his memoir To the River.

Gillmor is a Toronto journalist and author of novels and nonfiction books like Canada: A People's History.

They Are Here is an original piece by Governor General's Literary Award winner Erin Bow. (Ben Shannon/CBC)

In this short story, They Are Here, Erin Bow imagines a group of scientists stranded on a mission on Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Communication with earth, and therefore their food supply, has been mysteriously cut, dooming all aboard the research expedition.

Bow won the Governor General's Literary Award for young people's literature — text for the middle-grade novel Stand on the Sky.

She is a poet and children's book writer from Kitchener, Ont. Her books for young readers include Plain Kate and The Scorpion Rules.