Lee Lai Wins Stella Prize, First Non-Binary Graphic Novelist
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- Lee Lai won the 2026 Stella Prize for 'Cannon,' becoming the first non-binary writer and the first graphic novelist to take the $60,000 Australian literary award for women and non-binary writers, which has been open to non-binary writers since 2021.
- Lai was previously nominated for the Stella in 2023 for her debut 'Stone Fruit,' which won the Lambda Literary award for LGBTQ comics, the Cartoonist Studio prize, the Lynd Ward Graphic Novel prize, and two Ignatz awards.
- 'Cannon' follows a queer Chinese woman in Montreal caring for her aging gung-gung (maternal grandfather) and working in a fine-dining kitchen, whose best friend Trish secretly mines her life for a novel she frets may be a 'cliche' gay-immigrant story attractive to white funding boards.
- Lai says the $60,000 prize is transformative for graphic novelists, a community that 'doesn't have a lot of money' and jokes about 'endlessly doing fundraisers and passing around the same $20 bill' — 'in my world, this is a lot.'
- Stella judges praised 'Cannon' as 'a bruising examination of the lifelong weight that people — often women — carry,' and a reminder that 'the very best graphic novels can do what prose alone cannot.'
- Lai began writing 'Cannon' in 2019 and substantially rewrote it during the pandemic, shifting from grinding down a friendship to 'a much more optimistic outcome for Cannon and Trish than I originally planned.'
Why it matters: For Lai personally, the $60,000 translates to extended creative runway in a graphic-novel community she describes as perpetually fundraising and passing around 'the same $20 bill.' For the broader Australian literary establishment, the win marks the Stella Prize — a major women-and-non-binary award — formally validating graphic novels and non-binary authorship as eligible for its top honor, following its 2021 expansion to non-binary writers.
