Nominees for The 2011 Doug Wright Awards

Finalists for 7th Annual Doug Wright Awards

Toronto, ON —The Doug Wright Awards, Canada’s premier comics awards, are proud to announce their 2011 finalists.

The nominees for Best Book are:

Bigfoot by Pascal Girard (Drawn and Quarterly)
Chimo by David Collier (Conundrum Press)
Lose #2 by Michael DeForge (Koyama Press)
Moving Pictures by Kathryn Immonen, Stuart Immonen (Top Shelf Productions)
Streakers by Nick Maandag

The nominees for Best Emerging Talent are:

Aaron Costain, Entropy # 5
Alex Fellows, Spain and Morocco (www.spainandmorocco.com)
Keith Jones, Catland Empire (Drawn and Quarterly)
James Stokoe, Orc Stain Volume One (Image)
Tin Can Forest (aka Marek Colek and Pat Shewchuk), Baba Yaga and the Wolf (Koyama Press)

The nominees for the Pigskin Peters Award (which recognizes non-traditional and avant-garde comics) are:

Indoor Voice by Jillian Tamaki (Drawn and Quarterly)
Stooge Pile by Seth Scriver (Drawn and Quarterly)
So I’ve Been Told by Maryanna Hardy (Conundrum Press)
Spotting Deer by Michael DeForge (Koyama Press)
Wowee Zonk #3 edited by Patrick Kyle, Ginette Lapalme and Chris Kuzma (Koyama Press)

In addition, this year’s inductee into The Giants of the North, the Canadian Cartoonists Hall of Fame, will be legendary Vancouver cartoonist David Boswell, the creator of the influential alternative comic Reid Fleming: World’s Toughest Milkman.

Founded in 2004, The Doug Wright Awards recognize the best in English-language comics (or translations of French) by Canadians living at home and abroad. The 2011 nominees were chosen by a committee from a long list of works and submissions published during the 2010 calendar year, which for the first year officially included web comics. This year’s committee included Chester Brown, Seth, Jerry Ciccoritti, Bryan Munn and Sean Rogers.

The 2011 winners will be decided by a five-member jury and will be announced at a gala ceremony as part of the Toronto Comics Arts Festival (TCAF). The jury will include Sara Quin (musician; one-half of Tegan and Sara), Michael Redhill (poet; author of Consolation and Martin Sloane; publisher of the literary journal Brick), Anita Kunz (artist, award-winning illustrator), Marc Bell (artist, cartoonist of Hot Potatoe; winner of the 2010 Pigskin Peters Award) and Mark Medley (National Post books editor).

The 7th annual Doug Wright Awards, a feature event of the 2011 Toronto Comics Arts Festival, will be held in Toronto on Saturday May 7, 2011.

For more information, visit www.wrightawards.ca.