Canadians Maurice Vellekoop, Walter Scott, Cassandra Calin among the finalists for 2025 Doug Wright Awards

Maurice Vellekoop, Walter Scott and Cassandra Calin are among the Canadian nominees for the 2025 Doug Wright Award. 

Founded in 2005, the Doug Wright Awards have been awarded annually to celebrate the best in comics across Canada. They are named after influential Canadian cartoonist Doug Wright.

Entries were submitted across four categories: best book, emerging talent, small or micro-press book and kids' book.

Each winner will receive a small cash prize and the winner of the Nipper Award will receive a week-long stay at the Valleyview Artist Retreat in Caledon, Ont. 

Vellekoop is being recognized for his graphic memoir I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together, which depicts his intense childhood and difficult young adulthood as a young gay person in a strict Christian household. Set in Toronto from the 1970s, Vellekoop begins to see his relationships with his mother and father fracture. As he ventures out on his own, he explores his passion for art and is set on finding romance and is met with violent attacks and the anxiety surrounding the AIDS era. I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together shows an artist's personal journey to self-love and acceptance.

• Maurice Vellekoop's memoir reflects strained family ties growing up gay and Christian

Vellekoop is a Toronto-born writer and artist. He has been an illustrator for the past three decades, including companies like Air Canada and Bush Irish Whiskey. He won the 2024 Toronto Book Award for I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together. He is also the author of A Nut at the Opera.

LISTEN / Maurice Vellekoop on the Next Chapter:  

The Next Chapter18:56Maurice Vellekoop reflects on family, art, and growing up gay in a religious household

Mohawk artist Walter Scott earned an nomination for the graphic novel The Wendy Award. 

In the Wendy series, Scott follows the character's journey as a comic book artist who must contend with both the art world and her personal life. Scott's latest instalment in the series, The Wendy Award, follows Wendy struggling with imposter syndrome after receiving a nomination for the prestigious National FoodHut Contemporary Art Prize. 

• Why Walter Scott is saying goodbye to Wendy, his most famous creation

Scott is a Mohawk artist based in Toronto. Scott has published three other Wendy books, including Wendy's Revenge, and has appeared in The New Yorker and the Best American Comics anthology. 

LISTEN | Walter Scott on ending the beloved Wendy series: 

22:16Walter Scott: Why he’s saying goodbye to Wendy, his most famous creation

Cassandra Calin has been nominated in the best kids' book category for The New Girl. 

Inspired by artist Calin's own immigration story, The New Girl is a middle-grade graphic novel about Lia and her family's move to Canada from Romania. Alongside all the complicated feelings Lia has about moving to somewhere completely different from home, when she arrives, she experiences her first period. Now, as Lia navigates a new school with new classmates and new languages, she is also faced with the daunting task of puberty.

• Cassandra Calin on creating a comic book about the immigrant experience — and her favourite Romanian snacks

Calin is an artist and popular webtoon cartoonist who has amassed over 2.5 million followers on social media. She was born in Romania and now lives in Montreal. The New Girl is her debut graphic novel.

LISTEN | Cassandra Calin on her comic book The New Girl and webcomic fame: 

The Next Chapter14:44Cassandra Calin on The New Girl and webcomic stardom

Rosena Fung's Age 16,  Boum's The Jellyfish, translated by Helge Dascher and Robin Lang, and Sid Sharp's Bog Myrtle are also Canadian titles shortlisted in the emerging talent category and also for The Doug Wright Award for best book.  

Fung is being recognised for her graphic novel Age 16. It carefully explores the dynamics of gender, race and motherhood between three generations of women. In 1954 Guangdong, Mei Laan is 16 years old and seeks an arranged marriage so that she can be "free." In Hong Kong in 1972, her now teenage daughter Lydia is a dancer and longs for her approval.

In Toronto in 2000, Lydia's daughter Roz is struggling with body image and is confronted by family secrets when her estranged por por, grandma, makes a surprise visit. 

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Fung is an illustrator and comic artist from Toronto. Her work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, giant murals and on TV. She is also the creator of Living with Viola.

The Jellyfish by Boum, translated by Helge Dascher and Robin Lang, follows a twenty-something year old named Odette living a normal life until one day they begin being haunted by a jellyfish floating in their eye. It's just a minor annoyance until the jellyfish starts to multiply.

Boum uses stunning and inventive artwork in a powerful story about facing the thing we fear most.

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Samantha Leriche-Gionet, also known as Boum, is an illustrator, animator and comic creator from Montreal.

Dascher is a translator of several comic books. She's also translated many of Guy Delisle's titles, including Aya by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie, White Rapids by Pascal Blanchet and Paul Goes Fishing by Michel Rabagliati.

Lang has been co-translating graphic novels for Pow Pow Press with Helge Dascher since 2017. They have worked together on several titles, including Lonely Boys by Sophie Bédard, which won the 2021 Doug Wright Award for best book. Lang runs a cut-flower farm in the Eastern Townships during the growing season and translates from French to English in the winter. 

​​In Sid Sharp's Bog Myrtle, sisters Beatrice and Magnolia are polar opposites — Beatrice is always cheerful and Magnolia is always grumpy. When Beatrice is gifted a magic yarn from a giant forest spider, she sets out to knit the perfect sweater. But her greedy sister Magnolia sees this as a chance to put the spiders to work for profit. And when the spiders strike, Bog Myrtle is not pleased.

Sharp is a Toronto-based painter and comic creator. Their debut comic was The Wolf Suit.

The Doug Wright Award shortlist includes:  

• Age 16 by Rosena Fung
• Bog Myrtle by Sid Sharp
• I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together by Maurice Vellekoop
• The Field by Dave Lapp
• The Jellyfish by Boum, translated by Robin Lang and Helge Dascher
• The Wendy Award by Walter Scott

The Nipper is granted to the best emerging talent. The shortlist includes: 

• The Jellyfish by Boum, translated by Robin Lang and Helge Dascher
• Ballpark by James Collier
• Age 16 by Rosena Fung 
• The Harrowing Tales of La Corriveau by Frances V. Reilly 
• Bog Myrtle by Sid Sharp 

The Pigskin Peters recognizes the best small or micro-press book. The shortlist includes: 

• Be Yourself! Oh, Not Like That by Emilia Strilchuk
• Customer Service by Patrick Allaby 
• The Cosmic Con by Ron Kasman
• The Same Water by Richard Fairgray
• The Slenderest of Leashes 1 by Xiaoxiao Li
• The Egghead is for best kids' book
• Alterations by Ray Xu
• Lost at Windy River: A True Story of Survival by Trina Rathgeber, Alina Pete, Jillian Dolan
• The New Girl by Cassandra Calin
• The Racc Pack by Stephanie Cooke, Whitney Gardner
• The Shit Witch by Lis Xu

Nominees and winners are chosen by a panel of three judges per category. 

This year's judges include Nathalie Atkinson, Ivana Filipovich, Gareth Gaudin, Andrew Hawthorn, Chris Hutsul, Kate Phillips, Pamela Marie Pierce, Ken Steacy, Diana Tamblyn, Eric Veillette, Stanley Wany and Lis Xu.

The Doug Wright Awards winners will be announced at an in-person and livestreamed gala event in Toronto on June 7, 2025.