Toronto writer Maurice Vellekoop wins 2025 Doug Wright Award for best comic
Prizes for best book, emerging talent, small or micro-press book and kids book were awarded
I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together by Maurice Vellekoop has won the 2025 Doug Wright Award for best comic book.
The Doug Wright Awards, named after the influential Canadian cartoonist, annually celebrates excellence in comics across Canada, awarding four prizes — the best book award, the Nipper Award, the Pigskin Peters Award and the best kids book.
The winners each receive a small cash prize and the winner of the Nipper award also receives a week-long stay at the Valleyview Artist Retreat.
I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together depicts Vellekoop's 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.
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.
The Jellyfish by Boum, translated by Robin Lang Helge Dascher, won the The Nipper award which celebrates emerging talent. In The Jellyfish, Boum uses inventive artwork in a powerful story about facing the thing we fear most when a twenty-something becomes haunted by a jellyfish floating in their eye.
Patrick Allaby won the Pigskin Peters award for best small or micro-press book for his self-published work, Customer Service.
Trina Rathgeber, Alina Pete and Jillian Dolan won the best kids book award for Lost at Windy River, which tells the story of a girl who uses her traditional knowledge to survive in the wilderness.
Previous Doug Wright award recipients include Canada Reads winner Kate Beaton in 2023 for her graphic memoir Ducks.
Nominees and winners were 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.
In addition to the awards, publisher and artist Richard Comely and cartoonist Lou Skuce were inducted into the Canadian Cartooning Hall of Fame, Giants of the North.
