2008 Doug Wright Awards Nominees

Congrats to all the nominees -- and in particular, my friend John Martz upon his nomination for Excelsior 1968.

From the press release:

June 3, 2008 Toronto ON — An eclectic mix of Canada's young and established cartooning talent has made the cut for this year's Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning. Canada's premier cartooning award, the Wrights were established in 2005 to recognize the best graphic novels, comics, and cartooning that the country has to offer. This year, the nominees feature gripping historical fiction and personal memoir produced by well-known cartoonists and—for the first time—self-published up-and-comers.

The 2008 DWA finalists for Best Book are:

365 Days: A Diary by Julie Doucet (Drawn and Quarterly)

Spent by Joe Matt (Drawn and Quarterly)

The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam by Ann Marie Fleming (Riverhead Books)

Southern Cross by Laurence Hyde (Drawn and Quarterly)

The 2008 DWA finalists for Best Emerging Talent are:

Essex County Vol. 1 Tales From The Farm & Vol. 2 Ghost Stories by Jeff Lemire (Top Shelf)

Pope Hats by Ethan Rilly (self-published)

Kieffer #1 by Jason Kieffer (self-published)

The Experiment Nick Maandag (self-published)

In addition, the Wright Awards is pleased to announce a new category—the first since its debut—dedicated to works that fall outside the bounds of traditional storytelling. The Pigskin Peters Award (named after a character in the classic Canadian comic strip Birdseye Center) was created to recognize progressive works by Canadian cartoonists that are either more experimental in nature or lack a traditional narrative structure.

The finalists for the first annual Pigskin Peters Award are:

Milk Teeth by Julie Morstad (Drawn and Quarterly)

Little Lessons in Safety by Emily Holton (Conundrum Press)

Excelsior 1968 by John Martz (self-published)

Fire Away by Chris von Szombathy (Drawn and Quarterly)

The finalists for the 4th Annual Doug Wright Awards were chosen by a nominating committee that included cartoonists Chester Brown and Seth, Canadian director Jerry Ciccoritti, comics historian Jeet Heer and writer and Sequential blogger Bryan Munn. The winners will de decided by a jury including writer and film critic Katrina Onstad, gallery curator Helena Reckitt, writer Mariko Tamaki and cartoonist Ho Che Anderson. The winners will be handed out in Toronto in August 2008. For more information go to www.wrightawards.ca.

Above: a sample of Doug Wright's Family from my blog. More about Wright's work on this Wright Awards page.