Lee Lai: First Graphic Novel Creator to Win Stella Prize
Skip to commentsLee Lai’s graphic novel Cannon has become the first graphic novel to win the Stella Prize given to women and nonbinary Australian authors. The prize amount is $60,000. She is also the first trans person to win the award.
Here’s how Lee describes her book (per ABC):
“[Cannon] is a story about small-scale human follies and the excruciating process of learning and growing through them,” she says.
“It’s also a book about love and about rage and those are two emotions that have fuelled my efforts as an artist and as an organiser for the past many years, and if I must think about the fact that this book is landing for somebody else then my big hope is that it acts as a catharsis and an encouragement to experience some real love or some real anger and that one might use that for something worthwhile.”
Cannon is up for a Doug Wright Award Best Book and was a finalist in the LA Times Book Prizes earlier this year.

Her book was published last fall by Drawn & Quarterly.
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