Winners of the 2021 Doug Wright Awards announced virtually for the second year
Posted on 08. May, 2021 by Conan Tobias in Uncategorized
Last night, Saturday, May 8th, the winners of the 17th annual Doug Wright Awards were announced, during a virtual ceremony (a featured event of the 2021 Toronto Comic Arts Festival), pre-recorded and livestreamed on Facebook and YouTube. Don McKellar once again hosted this second pandemic edition of the awards, still trapped in his garage, though this year assisted by the drummer Alaska B.
More than 200 viewers tuned in to the livestream, which featured the DWA co-founder Seth in front of a gold curtain, virtually handing out trophies to the winners. Here they are:
The Doug Wright Award for best book
Lonely Boys
S. Bédard
(Pow Pow Press)
The Nipper: The Doug Wright Awards for emerging talent
Veronica Post
Langosh & Peppi: Fugitive Days
(Conundrum Press)
The Pigskin Peters: The Doug Wright Award for best small or micro-press book
(Sponsored by Broken Pencil)
The Noiseless Din
Scott Carruthers
(Popnoir Editions)
The Egghead: The Doug Wright Award for best kids’ book
A Slug Story
Mandi Kujawa, Hana Kujawa, Claude St. Aubin, and Lovern Kindzierski
(Renegade Arts Entertainment)
Winners in each category will receive a small cash prize along with their trophy (or bowler hat, in the case of the Pigskin Peters). The winner of the Nipper will also receive a week-long stay at the Valleyview Artist Retreat, in Caledon, Ontario.
This year’s inductee into The Giants of the North: The Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame is Fred Kelly (1921–2005), an artist noted for his work on the Second World War–era Canadian Whites, most notably for the creation of the character Mr. Monster. Kelly was inducted by Robert Pincombe, and his widow, Rita Kelly, accepted the induction.
Celebrity presenters included the author Margaret Atwood, the cartoonist David Collier, last year’s Nipper winner Sylvia Nickerson, and the author and teacher Emily Pohl-Weary. The artist R. Sikoryak was on hand once again to “live” draw the ceremony, and the evening also included tributes to Annie Koyama, whose Koyama Press currently is wrapping up its final season, and Bill Wright, the son of Doug Wright and the inspiration for many of his Nipper strips, who died in December.
Our friends at the Beguiling have put together a a special shopping list of this year’s DWA nominees in their online store.
If for some reason you missed the ceremony, archived versions can now be found on Facebook and YouTube.
Thanks to everyone who made this year’s ceremony happen, especially our sponsors: TCAF, Broken Pencil, Valleyview Artist Retreat, the Beguiling, and Taddle Creek.
Congratulations to this year’s winners. We hope to see you live on stage in 2022.
