Submitting to the 2026 Doug Wright Awards

Submissions to the 22nd Doug Wright Awards (for books published in the 2025 calendar year) are now closed! Thanks for everyone who entered. We hope to see you at this year’s ceremony on June 6!

2026 Judges

Patrick Allaby
Patrick Allaby lives in Sackville, New Brunswick, in the Siknikt district of Mi’kma’ki, where he works as a library assistant. His book Customer Service won the 2025 Pigskin Peters award. His latest book, Ontario & Back, was published in May.

Aaron Costain
Aaron Costain is an architect specialising in libraries and academic buildings who lives and works in Ontario. He is the author of the graphic novel Entropy as well as multiple minicomics, and is a member of the disreputable jam comics collective Team Society League. Aaron is a two-time Doug Wright Awards nominee.

Kurtis Findlay
Kurtis Findlay has been a lifelong fan of the comics medium. His first book, Chuck Jones: The Dream That Never Was, unearthed a long-lost comic strip by the famous Looney Tunes animator. He has worked on various projects for the Library of American Comics, including editing a hardcover reprint series of Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse. Currently, he works as an editor and designer for Clover Press, a publisher of graphic novels and comic-related art books. Kurtis lives in the Vancouver area with his wife, three children, and thousands of comics.

Jaleen Grove
Jaleen Grove, Ph.D., is an associate professor in illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design and a Canadian art historian whose areas of focus are the history of illustration, illustration research, and periodical studies. She is one of three editors of the book History of Illustration, and has served as associate editor for the Journal of Illustration since its inception. Her monographs include studies on illustrators-cartoonists Oscar Cahén, Walter Haskell Hinton, and Olive Allen Biller, and she presently is building the Arden Phair Cartoon Collection, a database of Niagara-area editorial cartooning. Jaleen is also an artist, and contributed a page to an anthology of Hamilton-themed comics published by Cartoon Foundry in 2025.

Luiza Junqueira
Luiza Junqueira is a storyteller, former Montessori teacher, literacy specialist, and content creator with a bachelor degree in arts and communications. She manages the new Jane and Finch location of Children’s Book Bank, where she is responsible for its literacy programming, author visits, and operations. Luiza is passionate about graphic novels and comics, and is an advocate for inclusive books and the rights of every child and youth to have access to them.

Alyson Lee
Alyson Lee is a cartoonist and illustrator based in Burlington, Ontario, who likes to create comics of people finding connections with each other. Alyson has self-published several comics and zines and is always thinking about her next projects. Outside of drawing, Alyson loves reading and reviewing comics, and learning about very niche areas of expertise.

Hartley Lin
Hartley Lin is a cartoonist based in Montreal. His graphic novel Young Frances won the 2019 Doug Wright Award for Best Book. His comics and illustrations have appeared in The New Yorker, The Believer, and Taddle Creek. In his shadowy past, he used to work for the Ontario government.

Dylan Magwood
Dylan Magwood is a Toronto-based cartoonist who has worked in and around the comic scene for the past sixteen years. Currently, he works as a buyer and events coordinator for the Beguiling comic shop. Previously, he managed the comic shop Page & Panel and worked on the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. He got his start working in animation on programs such as Mad, on the Cartoon Network, and Saturday Night Live, on NBC.

Blaise Moritz
Blaise Moritz is the author of Bar Delicious, which won the Expozine Award for best English language comic, in 2024, and is one of the artists featured in 30×30: Thirty Years of Conundrum Press. Since 2019, he has self-published The Test, a monthly poetry comic. His comic Thousand Oaks: Machine Mail (Part 3) was a finalist for the Pigskin Peters award. His work appeared most recently in the anthologies Pulping II: Reality and Rescue Party: A Graphic Anthology of COVID Lockdown.

Frances Reilly
Frances Reilly is an illustrator and comics artist living in Montreal. She grew up in Squamish, British Columbia, and started making comics while completing her Ph.D. in history at the University of Saskatchewan. Her graphic novel, The Harrowing Tales of La Corriveau, was nominated for a Doug Wright award in 2025.

Joan Steacy
Joan Steacy lives in Victoria, British Columbia. She is a graduate of Sheridan College, the Ontario College of Art and Design, and the University of Victoria. She co-created and taught the Comics and Graphic Novels certificate program at Camosun College. Her first graphic novel is the memoir Aurora Borealice, which was listed as one of “10 Canadian comics to read right now,” by the CBC. She was also awarded best graphic novel by Sequential in 2019. Joan illustrated the children’s books A Boy Named Tommy Douglas and wrote and illustrated Scrappy Jack. Gingerbread Man is her latest short graphic novel.

J.J. Steeves
J.J. Steeves is a Mi’kma’ki, Nova Scotia–based illustrator and arts educator. J.J.’s focus is treasuring the mundane in order to foster intimacy between art and viewer while exploring the significance of our daily patterns. JJ’s work largely is influenced by street art, comics, and zine culture. They have designed and facilitated arts programming for NSCAD University’s Extended Studies department, the MacPhee Centre for Creative Learning, the IWK Health Centre, and Halifax Public Libraries. J.J.’s comics, writing, and illustrations have been published by The Coast alternative weekly, Concordia’s The Link, Broken Pencil, Gaspereau Press, Conundrum, and Billie magazine. Since 2021, J.J. has worked for Conundrum’s marketing department.

Rules

Entries to the Doug Wright Awards must have been published during the previous calendar year (January 1 to December 31). We’re very broad minded about what we consider a book (graphic novel, single comic, mini-comic, zine, etc.), but we reserve the right to make the final call on a publication’s qualification.

Creators must be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident/landed immigrant (i.e., legally allowed to work in Canada). For books with more than one creator (i.e., separate authors and illustrators), all contributors must qualify as Canadian. (A book’s publisher may be non-Canadian.)

Books must be published in English. Books originally published in another language and translated into English are eligible, provided the English edition was published during the eligibility window.

New printings of books previously published in another calendar year (i.e., second or third printings, etc.) do not qualify. This does not include first printings of collections of previously published work (i.e., a collected volume of individual comic books).

There is no limit to how many individual titles a creator or group of creators can submit in a single year.

Submissions may be entered by either the creator or the publisher, but parties should check with each other to make sure they don’t both submit the same book.

Books published exclusively on digital platforms may be submitted, provided they are the digital equivalent of a book (i.e., not an ongoing daily strip).

The decision of the judges will be final.

Submitting

Entries must be submitted via the Doug Wright Awards online portal. A form is required for each entry. If you’re submitting more than one entry, you can pay for all of them together on one form to avoid having to re-enter your payment information multiple times (i.e., if you are entering two titles at $20 each, you can pay $40 for the first entry and $0 for the second).

Each entry requires either hard copies and/or a PDF of the book being submitted.

If you’re not submitting a PDF of your entry, you must submit three copies of your book per category. (Each category has its own set of judges.)

If you’re submitting a PDF copy of your entry, you don’t have to submit hard copies, but personally, we think there’s something to be said for letting the judges hold your book in their hands. They seem to like that. However, if your book is self-published and sending three copies is a hardship, you can send just one or two copies—but only if also submitting a PDF. Please make sure your PDF includes your book’s cover.

Please use the title of your book as your PDF’s file name. Naming your file OU3456.pdf makes it hard to find and organize.

There’s an excellent chance your PDF will be too big for our meager submission portal. If so, please email us a download link to your file at dougwrightawards@gmail.com, and keep the link active as long as possible.

We cannot return hard copies after judging has been completed, even if your book was disqualified.

Mail or courier entries (no in-person drop-offs, please) to:

Conan Tobias
703-206 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5R 2N6
Att: The Doug Wright Awards

Deadlines and Fees

Entries must be submitted by 5 p.m. Eastern Time on January 9, 2026.

Hard copies must be received by January 16, 2026.

The fee for Best Book and the Egghead is $25 per entry. (Self-published creators who cannot afford the entry fee may request to have it waived.)

There is no entry fee for the Nipper and Pigskin Peters categories.

Judging

Entries in each category are evaluated by a three-member jury. Each jury consists of at least one cartoonist, one judge with industry expertise (editor, publisher, reviewer, journalist, librarian, bookseller, academic, etc.), and a third judge who either falls into one of the previous categories or is not directly involved in the industry but has a deep knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the medium.

We attempt to make our juries as diverse as possible by selecting judges with a variety of professional backgrounds, from a variety of regions (not necessarily confined to Canada), and who reflect Canada’s various cultural communities.

Judges are given approximately four weeks to read entries. Juries meet via conference call to deliberate and come to a consensus on their category’s short list and winner.

Whenever possible, judges will evaluate books in their printed form. However, logistics may sometimes mean a judge can only view a publication digitally.

Judges choose winning entries based on the combined quality of their illustration, writing, and production. Other factors may include style, creativity, and originality. If you would like to be a judge for the Doug Wright Awards in the future, please contact us at dougwrightawards@gmail.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to be a Canadian to enter?
The Doug Wright Awards are open to Canadian citizens or those with permanent resident/landed immigrant status (i.e., legally able to work in Canada). Those who live in Canada but do not have legal status are not eligible. For books with more than one creator (i.e., separate authors and illustrators), all contributors must qualify as Canadian. (A book’s publisher may be non-Canadian.)

Does my book have to have a Canadian publisher?
No. Entries to the Doug Wright Awards may be published anywhere in the world, provided the creator or creators are Canadian citizens or permanent Canadian residents.

Is there prize money?
Winners of Best Book, the Nipper, the Pigskin Peters, and the Egghead all receive a small cash prize along with their trophies. Depending on the year, winners of some categories might receive an additional prize as well.

Can I enter my own work?
Yes. Entries to the Doug Wright Awards may be made by a book’s creator or its publisher. Just make sure you talk to each other in advance so you don’t both end up submitting the same book.

What types of comics qualify?
The Doug Wright Awards is committed to supporting Canadian comics of all kinds. Submitted books may include, for example, graphic novels, single comics, mini-comics, or digital comics, provided illustrations are integral to the book’s story and the book is published in English (either initially or as a translation). Presently, we don’t have categories recognizing uncollected strips (whether published in print or digitally) or prose books about comics.

Do you accept books published in French?
We currently don’t accept books published in any language other than English. But if your book has been translated, that’s another story, provided the translation was published during the window of eligibility.

How do I know what categories I’m eligible for?
Any book is eligible for the Best Book category. The Pigskin Peters recognizes books not published by a major press. Books entered in the Egghead category must be aimed primarily at an audience aged 0 to 17. The Nipper is a creator category, not a book award, but books of any type may be submitted as support material.

What counts as a “major press”?
Any book published by a traditional major book publisher, such as Random House, HarperCollins, or Simon & Schuster, cannot be entered into the Pigskin Peters category, which is for small-press or self-published books. We also include a few significant comic publishers in the “major” category, including Fantagraphics, Conundrum, and Drawn & Quarterly. If you’re not sure whether your book is a major-press book or a small-press book, drop us a line at dougwrightawards@gmail.com.

What does it take to win a Doug Wright Award?
Judges choose winning entries based on the combined quality of their illustration, writing, and production. Other factors may include style, creativity, and originality. Each type of book is based on its own merit (i.e., a well-made mini-comic will not automatically be considered of lesser quality than a mass-produced book simply for being a mini-comic).

Can I enter a digital comic?
Books that originate in and are exclusive to digital platforms are eligible to enter the Doug Wright Awards, provided they are the digital equivalent of a book (i.e., not a daily strip with an open or ongoing narrative). We know there will be some grey areas here, so if you’re unsure whether your comic qualifies, please contact us at dougwrightawards@gmail.com.

What can I do if my book doesn’t qualify for any of the Doug Wright Awards categories?
If your book is a comic and it was published in the past calendar year, it should qualify. If you think it doesn’t, drop us a line at dougwrightawards@gmail.com and we’ll see what we can figure out together.

Do picture books qualify for the Egghead category?
There’s often confusion about whether a traditional picture book can be considered a comic. There’s no easy answer to that question, but we feel that, by their very nature of using words and pictures to tell a story in sequence, picture books aren’t that different from comics. So, we welcome submissions of all kinds in this category, but we let the judges make the final call on whether a given book qualifies or not.

What is the age range for Egghead book submissions?
The Egghead recognizes a book of any size (graphic novel, picture book, single comic, mini-comic, etc.) primarily aimed at young readers (aged 0 to 17). Books aimed primarily at readers above the age of 17 should be entered into the Best Book category.

What is my submission fee used for?
The Doug Wright Awards is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to promoting the Canadian comics industry. It is funded entirely through sponsorships and submission fees. (We’re always happy to accept financial donations too, but since we’re not a charity, we can’t provide a tax receipt.) All money raised, including submission fees, is used to cover costs related to the awards ceremony, including trophies, host, audio-visual staff, Web-hosting costs, and more.

How can I be a judge?
If you are a cartoonist, have some level of industry expertise (editor, publisher, reviewer, journalist, librarian, bookseller, academic, etc.), or just really love and have a deep knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of comics and would like to judge a future Doug Wright Awards category, drop us a line. We attempt to make our juries as diverse as possible by selecting judges with a variety of professional backgrounds, from a variety of regions (not necessarily confined to Canada), and who reflect Canada’s various cultural communities.

When are the awards presented?
The annual Doug Wright Awards ceremony usually is timed to coincide with the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. TCAF’s date tends to jump around a bit, which means ours does too, but it’s usually in May or June. Keep an eye on our home page or social media feeds or drop us a line at dougwrightawards@gmail.com to be added to our mailing list.