Nominees announced for the 20th annual Doug Wright Awards

Deni Loubert and Maurice Vellekoop will be inducted into the Giants of the North: The Canadian Cartooning Hall of Fame.

The nominees have been announced for the 20th annual Doug Wright Awards, which honor “the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics.”

First Second, Conundrum Press, and Drawn & Quarterly all received multiple nominations for books they published

In addition to this year’s nominees, the Doug Wright committee also announced this year’s inductees for the Giants of the North: The Canadian Cartooning Hall of Fame: Deni Loubert, founder of Renegade Press and co-founder of Aardvark-Vanaheim, and Maurice Vellekoop, the cartoonist and fashion designer whose comics and illustrations have appeared in Time, GQ, Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker, Madamoiselle and many other magazines, as well as in the graphic novels The World of Gloria Badcock, A Nut at the Opera and I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together.

Nominees were selected from entries of books published in the 2023 calendar year. The short list and winners were chosen by a panel of three judges for each category. Each winner will receive a small cash prize, and the winner of The Nipper will be awarded a week-long stay at the Valleyview Artist Retreat in Caledon, Ontario.

And here are this year’s nominees …

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Kate Beaton, Jonathan Dyck + more win at the 2023 Doug Wright Awards

Henriette Valium was inducted into the Giants of the North hall of fame.

The winners of the 2023 Doug Wright Awards were announced during the Toronto Comic Arts Festival last night, in an in-person ceremony that was also livestreamed from the Arts & Letters Club in Toronto.

In what could become a common refrain during this year’s award season, Kate Beaton’s Ducks took home the award for best book. The critically acclaimed graphic novel details Beaton’s time working in Fort McMurray during Alberta’s oil rush. Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth’s You Know, Sex from Triangle Press received multiple nominations, and took home the award for best kids’ book.

The Doug Wright Awards annually honor “the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics.” Here’s the complete list of winners:

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Nominees announced for the 19th annual Doug Wright Awards

Henriette Valium will be inducted into the Canadian Cartooning Hall of Fame.

The nominees have been announced for the 19th annual Doug Wright Awards, which honor “the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics.”

Random House, Conundrum Press, and Drawn & Quarterly all received multiple nominations for books they published, while Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth’s You Know, Sex from Triangle Press received multiple nods. The Doug Wright Awards received a “record” 200 entries by Canadian authors and artists this year as part of the selection process. 

The award committee also announced that artist, painter and Palace of Champions creator Henriette Valium, who passed away in 2021, will be inducted into Giants of the North: The Canadian Cartooning Hall of Fame.

This year the awards will be given out live and in-person on April 29 at 8 p.m. Eastern. The event will also be livestreamed on YouTube.

The nominees for 2023 are:

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2022 Doug Wright Awards winners announced

Congratulations to this year’s winners.

The Doug Wright Awards, which honor “the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics,” presented their 2022 awards over the weekend during the Toronto Comic Arts Festival.

This was their first in-person awards ceremony since the beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020. The event was hosted by film critic Richard Crouse, and featured appearances by Jenn Woodall, David Collier and Dustin Harbin. The outdoor event was also livestreamed, but unfortunately the wind makes the audio very difficult to hear.

Here are the winners:

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Nominees announced for the Doug Wright Awards

Margaret Bloy Graham will be inducted into the Giants of the North Hall of Fame.

The nominees have been announced for the 18th annual Doug Wright Awards, which honor “the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics.”

Candlewick Press, Conundrum Press, Drawn & Quarterly and Tundra Books all received multiple nominations for books they published, while creators Sofia Alarcon, Brigitte Archambault and Alexander Laird also received multiple nods.

This year the awards will be given out live and in-person for the first time since before the pandemic, on June 18 at 7 p.m. Eastern during the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. The event will also be livestreamed on YouTube.

The nominees are:

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Winners announced for the 2021 Doug Wright Awards

S. Bédard, Veronica Post and more took home awards as Fred Kelly was inducted into the ‘Giants of the North’ hall of fame.

The Doug Wright Awards, which honor “the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics,” presented their 2021 awards last night during a livestream, which you can find embedded below.

Author Margaret Atwood, cartoonist David Collier, last year’s Nipper winner Sylvia Nickerson and author/teacher Emily Pohl-Weary were on hand to present the awards during a ceremony hosted by Don McKellar. R. Sikoryak was on hand once again to “live” draw the ceremony, and the evening also included tributes to Annie Koyama of Koyama Press and Bill Wright, the son of Doug Wright, who died in December.

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Nominees announced for the 2021 Doug Wright Awards

Michael DeForge, GG, Walter Scott, Scott Carruthers and more receive nominations; Fred Kelly will join the ‘Giants of the North’ hall of fame.

Nominees for the 2021 Doug Wright Awards, which honor “the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics,” were announced this week.

Drawn & Quarterly received four nominations, while Renegade Arts Entertainment received two. Self-published books were also very well represented.

This year’s judges include Steven W. Beattie, Claudia Dávila, Jenn Haines, Paul G. Hammond, Brett Lamb, Shauna McCabe, Sylvia Nickerson, Emily Pohl-Weary, Sarah Sawler, Jonathan Valelly and Frank Viva. The 2021 Doug Wright Awards will be broadcast as a pre-recorded livestream on Facebook and YouTube at 8 p.m. Eastern May 8, hosted by Don McKellar. 

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2020 Doug Wright Awards winners announced

Nina Bunjevac, Sylvia Nickerson, Elise Gravel and Freddy Carrasco were announced as winners during the virtual presentation.

The Doug Wright Awards, which honor “the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics,” presented their 2020 awards this past weekend during a livestream.

Nearly 200 people tuned in on YouTube and Facebook to watch the event, which normally would have taken place live during the Toronto Comic Arts Festival but was cancelled this year due to the global coronavirus pandemic.

Check out the winners below.

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2020 Doug Wright Awards nominees announced

Connor Willumsen, Sarah Leavitt, Jay Stephens, Chris Kuzma and more nominated for awards this year.

Nominees for the 2020 Doug Wright Awards, which honor “the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics,” were announced this week. Conundrum Press leads the pack this year in terms of nominations, with four, while Drawn & Quarterly and Koyama Press each received two nominations.

The Doug Wright Awards also announced that Walter Ball, a longtime cartoonist for the Toronto Star and creator of the strip Rural Route, will be inducted into the “Giants of the North” hall of fame.

You can find the complete list of nominees below.

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2019 Doug Wright Awards winners announced

Xiaoxiao Li, Arianne Dénommé and Hartley Lin win at the annual awards program for Canadian comics.

Xiaoxiao Li, Arianne Dénommé and Hartley Lin each took home an award from the Doug Wright Awards ceremony held at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival this weekend.

The Doug Wright Awards honor “the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics.” Check out the winners below:

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Comics Lowdown: Oni Press, Lion Forge announce merger, restructuring, layoffs

Plus: Patrick Gleason, Emily Carroll, awards and more!

Oni Press and Lion Forge will merge in order to “strengthen their library of original comics and graphic novels and help them to leverage their characters on other media platforms, including animation and film,” according to a story in the New York Times. The new publishing company will fall under the Polarity umbrella, a media entertainment entity launched by Lion Forge co-founder Dave Steward II last year.

The new company’s combined publishing efforts will be overseen by Oni Press publisher James Lucas Jones, who will be president and publisher. “We’re going to take a look at efficiencies and identify a number of areas of growth as well,” said Steward. The Beat details several layoffs that have already occurred at both companies, including Andrea Colvin, Lion Forge’s editor in chief, and Oni’s Desiree Wilson. According to Publisher’s Weekly, Joe Nozemack, founder of Oni Press, will join the new entity’s board and serve in an advisory role.

As far as their publishing lines go, Lion Forge Senior Publicist Jeremy Atkins tweeted that Oni Press “will be the publisher of all creator-owned books going forward,” while company-owned IP, like the Catalyst Prime universe, will fall under the Lion Forge banner. This one is still developing, so no doubt more information on the new structure and publishing entity will be forthcoming.

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Nominees announced for the 2019 Doug Wright Awards

Michael DeForge, Hartley Lin, John Martz and Fiona Smyth nominated for best book in the annual Canadian-focused awards program.

Nominees for the 15th annual Doug Wright Awards, which honor “the best work and most promising talent in Canadian comics,” were announced this morning. The list includes four nominees published by Koyama Press and two from Peow Studio.

You can find the complete list of nominees below.

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