Young Frances by Montreal artist Hartley Lin has won the 2019 Doug Wright Award for best book.

The Doug Wright Awards celebrate the best in Canadian cartooning, awarding three prizes — the best book award, Spotlight Award and Pigskin Peters Award — each year.

Young Frances follows a young, talented law clerk named Frances Scarland who struggles with the idea of work-life balance as her career at a corporate Toronto firm accelerates at a rapid pace.

The Spotlight Award, which goes to a comic artist deserving of greater recognition, went to Ariane Dénommé for 100 Days in Uranium City. The book tells the story of a northern mining town where workers spend 100 gruelling days in the mines before returning home for a two-week reprieve.

The Pigskin Peters Award, which recognizes a Canadian avant-garde comic, went to Retomber by Xiaoxiao Li. The autobiographical comic recounts 12 days of the artist's life.

During the award ceremony, Inuk artist Alootook Ipellie and Toronto comic creator Fiona Smyth were inducted into the Giants of the North Hall of Fame.

Ipellie, who died in 2007, was a well-known artist whose work appeared in galleries throughout Canada and Europe. His work included the comic strip Nuna and Vut, which ran in Nunatsiaq News for three years and often satirized the experience of Inuit men and women in Canada.

Smyth has been creating comics in Toronto for over 30 years. Most recently, Smyth published a graphic novel called Somnambulance, which collects her groundbreaking, adventurous comics.