{"id":668098,"date":"2026-05-13T11:35:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T11:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/668098\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T11:35:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T11:35:18","slug":"cannon-by-lee-lai-becomes-first-graphic-novel-to-win-the-stella-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/668098\/","title":{"rendered":"Cannon by Lee Lai becomes first graphic novel to win the Stella Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Lee Lai published her graphic novel Cannon, she had no idea how it would land with readers.<\/p>\n

“I never can tell what is going to resonate,” she tells ABC Arts.<\/p>\n

It turns out the author had little reason to worry.<\/p>\n

Not only has Cannon enjoyed critical and commercial success, but it has also been shortlisted for several literary prizes, including the 2026 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, a Canadian award due to be announced in June.<\/p>\n

Now, Cannon has won the 2026 Stella Prize, a literary award for women and nonbinary authors worth $60,000. It’s the first time a graphic novel has won the prize in its 14-year history.<\/p>\n

Lai, an Australian cartoonist based in Tiohti\u00e0:ke\/Montreal, suspects Cannon is a story suited to the times.<\/p>\n

“This book is a portrait of anger,” she says.<\/p>\n

Lai wrote it against the turbulent backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the Israeli invasion of Gaza.<\/p>\n

“Those things have really marked me,” she says. “I feel like the world has completely changed from what I knew it to be in the last 10 years.”<\/p>\n

Right now, she says, “a book exploring the value and the instructiveness of anger is timely”.<\/p>\n

2026 Stella Prize shortlistThe Rot by Evelyn AraluenMemorial Days by Geraldine BrooksFireweather by Miranda DarlingCannon by Lee Lai58 Facets: On violence and the law by Marika SosnowskiI Am Nannertgarrook by Tasma Walton<\/p>\n

Lai, wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh, accepted the award from Dame Quentin Bryce at a ceremony in Brisbane.<\/p>\n

She told the audience she had questioned the value of creating art when she felt she should instead be helping neighbours or protesting in the street.<\/p>\n

Winning the Stella, however, made her consider the idea that her work matters to her readers.<\/p>\n

“[Cannon] is a story about small-scale human follies and the excruciating process of learning and growing through them,” she says.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

Lai also acknowledged the historic nature of her win.<\/p>\n

“It’s a complicated but great honour to be the first trans person accepting this award in a moment when anti-trans rhetoric has become such a major fascist playing card.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Books like Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Maus by Art Spiegelman and Palestine by Joe Sacco taught Lai that “comics could be literary”. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)<\/p>\n

The Stella Prize judges praised Cannon for its humour and pathos.<\/p>\n

“This is a novel of immense skill and power that uses words and the visual language of comics to construct a complex and pleasingly unresolved story that readers can’t put down,” says judges’ chair Sophie Gee.<\/p>\n

“It’s relatable, funny, wise, and very weird in all the best ways.”<\/p>\n

Stella CEO and creative director Fiona Sweet \u2014 who calls Cannon “a triumph of the form” \u2014 hopes the book’s win exposes the form to new readers.<\/p>\n

“Cannon is a story about the complexities of relationships, and ones not often at the forefront of women’s stories: about women’s friendships, and the movement of friendships through life and conflict,” she said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“[It’s] a beautifully intimate story of forgiveness, gentleness, queerness, and care.”A study of friendship<\/p>\n

Cannon is the novel’s protagonist: “a hard worker, a chef with a flair for flavour [and] a diligent granddaughter who looks out for her difficult grandfather,” explains Kate Evans<\/a>, host of ABC Radio National’s The Bookshelf.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/p>\n

In Cannon, “Lai delicately explores different forms of care and caregiving, often to devastating effect”, writes Declan Fry. (Supplied: Giramondo Publishing)<\/p>\n

To the outside world, Cannon is, in the words of her friend Trish, “small, quiet and Chinese”, but underneath this impassive exterior is roiling emotion as Cannon takes on more and more as she tries to please the people around her.<\/p>\n

Trish, Cannon’s best friend since high school, calls out her tendency to take on other people’s problems.<\/p>\n

“You’re, what, patient and virtuous and long-suffering?” Trish says in a heated moment. “There’s no virtue in being so solitary and self-effacing and resentful.”<\/p>\n

As Cannon and Trish navigate a rocky patch in their longstanding relationship, the novel makes the case that friendship is worth fighting for.<\/p>\n

Lai says both Stone Fruit \u2014 her debut graphic novel, longlisted for the Stella Prize in 2022 \u2014 and Cannon emerged from conversations with friends.<\/p>\n

“I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by a bunch of thoughtful, overthinking people in my life, and often we end up talking about the same things,” she says.<\/p>\n

Around 2019, two themes Lai noticed emerging in these discussions were “the fragility and longevity of friendship”, and elder care.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Lai hopes the prize is viewed as “a win for the Australian comics community”, which has supported her throughout her career. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)<\/p>\n

In the queer circles in which Lai came of age, it was understood “that romantic relationships break, but friendships are supposed to last forever, and they’re supposed to be like family, and they’re supposed to be indispensable”.<\/p>\n

But time, she discovered, takes a toll. After five, 10, 15 years, “the day-to-day dirt of life comes in and constantly challenges the fabric of those relationships”, Lai says.<\/p>\n

She has come to learn that “friendships are simultaneously so much more fragile and so much more precious than I thought they were”.<\/p>\n

“I’m struck by that over and over as I figure out how to be an adult, and I wanted to write about it.”<\/p>\n

The art of the graphic novel<\/p>\n

Lai says she’s “shocked” a major literary prize has gone to a graphic novel, a relatively under-recognised form in Australia.<\/p>\n

“It wasn’t so long ago that my agent was trying to pitch it,” she says.<\/p>\n

“Most publishing houses don’t have visual acquisitions at all, or have closed their visual acquisitions, and so I’m very grateful to Giramondo for taking the risk. This is their first graphic novel since they published Blue by Pat Grant [in 2012].”<\/p>\n

Graphic novels are costly to produce for both authors and publishers.<\/p>\n

“The drawing of a graphic novel takes years,” Lai says.<\/p>\n

“I can generally work at the pace of about a page a day, and then that is interrupted by any other gigs that I have to take on for money.”<\/p>\n

The 2026 Stella Prize shortlist<\/a><\/p>\n

A memoir by Geraldine Brooks is among the eclectic works up for one of Australia’s most prestigious literary awards.<\/p>\n

Lai describes the twin processes of writing and illustrating as “inextricable”.<\/p>\n

“I tend to start scripting as much as I can to get the structure sorted and all the preliminary scene-building and dialogue, and then I will start drawing it,” she says.<\/p>\n

“And then, unlike traditional prose, you can’t edit in the same way that you can with a book, and so that creates its own challenges.<\/p>\n

“Ideally, you write as rigorously and carefully as you can before you start drawing but ultimately, it will necessitate throwing out tens of pages.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Lai threw out as many as 80 pages while editing Cannon. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)<\/p>\n

In both Cannon and Stone Fruit, Lai restricted herself to writing only dialogue, a constraint that helped creatively but added another layer of difficulty to the writing process.<\/p>\n

“When I’m trying to do essentially a psychological portrait, in this case of someone who is quite stoic and doesn’t talk very much, and I only have dialogue as my tool, that is challenging,” she says.<\/p>\n

“I found myself really grating up against that restriction a lot in this book.”<\/p>\n

Lai looked to other techniques to depict Cannon’s inner world, such as magical realism. In moments of emotion or stress, for example, black and white birds \u2014 symbols of “rage” and “intuition” only Cannon can see \u2014 appear in the frame.<\/p>\n

“Even things like composition, having visual objects crowding in on a person to represent a sense of overwhelm, can be really helpful,” Lai says.<\/p>\n

“From a reading perspective, I think it’s quite intuitive.”<\/p>\n

The luxury of time<\/p>\n

Since 2016, Lai has lived in Canada, where the comics scene is much larger.<\/p>\n

“It became quite clear to me that it wasn’t going to be possible to be a cartoonist in a practical sense in Australia,” she says.<\/p>\n

“There are a lot more commercial avenues in Canada and in the US in general to be a cartoonist.”<\/p>\n

Although she wears many different hats, Lai says her “big romance” is with the graphic novel format.<\/p>\n

“I love the writing process just as much as I love the drawing, and so the more I can spend time on that, the happier I am creatively.”<\/p>\n

But so far, writing graphic novels full-time has not been an option.<\/p>\n

“Financial necessity splits my time,” she says.<\/p>\n

“I don’t consider books as the thing that makes the money. If they do, lovely, but the bill-paying jobs tend to be illustration gigs.”<\/p>\n

\"Lee<\/p>\n

Lai is currently working on a collaboration with two Montreal authors, H Felix Chau Bradley and Francesca Ekwuyasi. (Supplied: Bee Elton)<\/p>\n

Lai says the $60,000 prize money (which is taxable) will buy her time, a precious resource for an author.<\/p>\n

“This is rent and food for as long as I can stretch it, which, living in Montreal, is probably longer than it would be in Australia.”<\/p>\n

After hustling to publish her previous two graphic novels as quickly as possible, she is looking forward to now taking more time on her next book.<\/p>\n

Slowing down to research, consult friends and mentors and “chew on the idea” for as long as she needs before putting pen to paper will be a luxury, she says.<\/p>\n

“That feels like a real treat.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Lee Lai published her graphic novel Cannon, she had no idea how it would land with readers.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,322571,322574,134,322568,322575,322576,114774,322569,322572,322570,322573],"class_list":["post-668098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cannon","tag-cannon-lee-lai","tag-entertainment","tag-lee-lai","tag-lee-lai-author","tag-lee-lai-stella-prize","tag-stella-prize","tag-stella-prize-2026","tag-stella-prize-shortlist","tag-stella-prize-winner","tag-stone-fruit-lee-lai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}