JEFF LEMIRE'S ESSEX COUNTY WINS DOUG WRIGHT AWARD!

2008 is continuing to be a banner year for Toronto cartoonist Jeff Lemire and his ESSEX COUNTY trilogy of graphic novels: he was honored on Friday with the Doug Wright Award for Best Emerging Talent. This award is the latest of several honors received by the ESSEX COUNTY trilogy, published by Top Shelf Productions: already the first two volumes have been awarded the Alex Award from the American Library Association/YALSA (for adult books
with teen appeal), the Shuster Award for Outstanding Canadian Comic Book Cartoonist (Writer/Artist), and nominations for one Harvey and two Eisner awards. This most recent award arrives just as the trilogy's final volume, THE COUNTRY NURSE, is listed for retailer pre-order in the Diamond PREVIEWS catalog (order code AUG08-4324).

The Doug Wright Award, announced August 8th in an evening ceremony at the
Toronto Public Library, celebrates the best in Canadian cartooning. "It's a
great honor to be included in the lineage of incredible Canadian cartooning
talent which the Wright awards help to shine a light on every year," said
Lemire after the ceremony. "It's even nicer to receive such a beautiful
award (designed by Seth himself) from a jury which includes some of my own
favorite cartoonists and writers including Seth, Ho Che Anderson, Mariko
Tamaki and Chester Brown." The ceremony's guest of honor was Lynn Johnston,
the award-winning creator of "For Better or For Worse."

Lemire's ESSEX COUNTY trilogy is an intimate portrait of one small-town
community through the years, charged with themes of family, memory, grief,
secrets, and reconciliation. The first two volumes, TALES FROM THE FARM and
GHOST STORIES, have earned rave reviews from critics (including two starred
reviews from Booklist), leading The Oregonian to name ESSEX COUNTY "a
trilogy that firmly establishes Lemire as one of the premier storytellers
in the graphic arts." THE COUNTRY NURSE, which completes the trilogy, will
be published by Top Shelf in October.

"The Essex County Trilogy has been a true labor of love for me," says
Lemire, "and now that the final volume is due to be released, I'm very
excited for my readers to be able to share in its conclusion with me."

ABOUT JEFF LEMIRE: Born in a tiny farming town in southwestern Ontario,
Canada in 1976, cartoonist Jeff Lemire now resides in Toronto. His
previous projects include two issues of his self-published anthology comic
Ashtray (2003) as well as the Xeric-Award-winning graphic novel Lost Dogs
(2005). His Essex County trilogy has been nominated for the Ignatz Award
and two Eisner Awards, received the American Library Association's Alex
Award (for adult books with teen appeal), and won the Joe Shuster Award for
outstanding Canadian comic book cartoonist. Most recently, he was named
Best Emerging Talent at Canada's Doug Wright Awards in August 2008.
Following the Essex County trilogy, Lemire is currently preparing The
Nobody, a graphic novel for DC/Vertigo, and an untitled future project for
Top Shelf.

For more information about the 2008 Doug Wright Awards, visit:
http://www.wrightawards.ca/

For more information about Jeff Lemire and ESSEX COUNTY, visit:
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/jefflemire