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The jury for next year’s MoCCA Arts Festival Awards of Excellence — a prize for cartoonists has been announced and it’s stellar:  Charles Burns, Annie Koyama, David Plunkert, Andrea Tsurumi, and Alexandra Zsigmond. The awards recognize the most outstanding work on view at the festival and will be the subject of a show at the Society of Illustrators from May 12 – June 13, 2015. The  rest of the announcement below:

Society of Illustrators Executive Director Anelle Miller says, “The exhibitors at the MoCCA Arts Festival are among the most daring and inventive voices in comics and illustration working today, and we are pleased to celebrate their importantwork and advance the Society’s long heritage of recognizing the finest artists in all fields of illustration with the MoCCA.

Judging of the MoCCA Arts Festival will happen Saturday, April 11th in the afternoon. Judges will convene and discuss each of their favorites based on submissions they will have received in February, ultimately deciding on 5 “Awards of Excellence” to be named that evening. All materials chosen in the jury’s initial survey will be acquired by Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library for a newly-established MoCCA Arts Festival collection, to be expanded Guidelines for submitting work will be posted on the Society’s website after applications are approved and tables are confirmed in mid December. The deadline to apply to the MoCCA Arts Festival is December 5th, and applications are available to download from the website at www.societyillustrators.org.

Charles Burns is an American cartoonist and illustrator whose dark and thrilling comics have received wide praise and multiple awards. Burns came to prominence in the 1980s with his work for RAW, and later went on to publish several books through Fantagraphics including El Borbah (1999), Big Baby (2000), and Skin Deep (2001). In 2005, Burns published  a single volume of his hit Black Hole (Pantheon).

Annie Koyama is the publisher behind Toronto-based Koyama Press. Founded in 2007, Koyama Press is known for their  alternative edge and diverse range of titles including Michael DeForge’s Very Casual, Julia Wertz’s The Infinite Wait and  Other Stories, Walter Scott’s Wendy, and many more.

David Plunkert’s client list includes Capitol Records, Gatorade, NPR, Nickelodeon, Nike, Rolling Stone, The New York  Times, to name a few. In 1995, he co-founded Spur Design, a design studio located in Baltimore, MD. He has been  recognized by numerous organizations including Communication Arts, Graphis, and the Society of Illustrators. In 2014,  he premiered his self-published comic Heroical, which received a 2014 MoCCA Arts Festival Award of Excellence.

Andrea Tsurumi is an illustrator and cartoonist whose comic Andrew Jackson Throws a Punch won the 2013 MoCCA  Arts Festival Award of Excellence. She earned her BA from Harvard and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, and her  notable client list includes The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Ballantine Books, The New York Academy of Medicine,  and many more. Her work also appears in several anthologies including Little Nemo: Dream Another Dream (Locust

Alexandra Zsigmond is the Deputy Art Director for The Opinion Section at The New York Times where she curates illustration and comics. Since graduating from Stanford University in 2004, she has worked as program coordinator and designer for several organizations including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C.