Author–artist Lee Lai has won the 2026 Stella Prize for her graphic novel, Cannon. This is the first time the Stella has been won by a graphic novel.

Lai, who was shortlisted for the Stella Prize in 2022 for Stone Fruit, has had work published in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Granta and more. Cannon was named as a best book for 2025 in several lists, and shortlisted for several prizes, including the Carol Shields Prize and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Clearly, this is someone whose voice and sense of the contemporary world is hitting all the right notes.

With Cannon, we meet a young woman valiantly, if not very competently, struggling to craft and maintain a satisfying life. She jogs; she cooks; she listens to mindfulness recordings; she watches horror movies with her best friend. She seems able to maintain her cool in a context where the pressure keeps mounting.

This creates a glorious portrait of contemporary ennui, with bursts of bright emotion – anger, grief, longing – breaking up the monochrome world she otherwise inhabits in this largely black-and-white graphic novel.

Her nickname is ironic: her given name, Lucy, becomes “Luce” thanks to her best........

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