5th annual Doug Wright Awards to be held at Toronto Comics Arts Festival
Posted on 25. Feb, 2009 by DWAMagpie in Uncategorized
Ceremony will feature the official launch of The Collected Doug Wright Vol. One
Toronto, ON — The 2009 Doug Wright Awards for Canadian Cartooning will be handed out Saturday, May 9th at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Jackman Hall in Toronto, Ontario, as part of the Toronto Comics Arts Festival (TCAF).
Now in its fifth year, The Wright Awards are Canada’s premier awards event celebrating the best in English-language cartooning, from renowned cartoonists to the best in emerging talent and experimental comics.
This year’s ceremony will also serve as the official launch party for The Collected Doug Wright: Canada’s Master Cartoonist, the first of a two-volume retrospective to be published by Drawn and Quarterly. The launch will feature an on-stage discussion of the life and career of the seminal Canadian cartoonist between Seth, the book’s co-editor and designer, co-editor and writer Brad Mackay and Chris Oliveros, the book’s publisher.
As usual, the 2009 DWA jury will be comprised of representatives from a wide swath of Canadian society, from arts and culture to politics and the media. The jury for the 5th annual awards is:
Andrew Coyne, the national editor for Maclean’s magazine and regular political panellist on CBC Television’s The National.
Martin Levin, the books editor of The Globe and Mail and a contributor to several anthologies, including What I Meant to Say.
Joe Ollmann, a Montreal-based cartoonist and author of This Will All End in Tears, winner of the 2007 Doug Wright Award for Best Book.
Bob Rae, the Liberal Party of Canada’s foreign affairs critic and the Member of Parliament for Toronto Centre. Rae served as the 21st premier of Ontario from 1990 to 1995.
Diana Tamblyn, an Ignatz-nominated Canadian cartoonist and author of several mini-comics, including The Rosie Stories and There You Were.
The Doug Wright Awards recognize the finest in Canadian comics in three categories: Best Book, Best Emerging Talent and the Pigskin Peters Award (which acknowledges the best in non-narrative or experimental comics).
Over the past five years, The Wright Awards have proudly featured a Who’s Who of Canada’s fertile comics scene at its podium, including Seth, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Michel Rabigliati, Lorenz Peter, Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, Joe Ollmann, Rebecca Kraatz, Ann Marie Fleming, Jeff Lemire and Julie Morstad.
About The Doug Wright Awards
The Doug Wright Awards were established in December 2004 as a means of casting a spotlight on the range of cartoonists and comic artists working in English in Canada. The awards are named after Doug Wright (1917-1983) whose strip Doug Wright’s Family ran in newspapers in Canada and around the world from the late 1940s to the early 1980s.
