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The Reuben Awards were given out over the holiday by the National Cartoonists Society, and Roz Chast won the Reuben Award, a once in a lifetime trophy only bestowed on the finest cartoonists. Chast is only the third woman to win the Reuben—Lynn Johnston won in 1985 and Cathy Guisewaite in 1993—and she beat out Hilary Price and Stephen Pastis for the honor, mostly on the strength of her graphic novel Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant, a book that has racked up a ton of awards and acclaim for Chast, along with a $250,000 prize.

The rest of the divisional winners are as follows:

Magazine Feature / Magazine Illustration
Tom Richmond

Newspaper Illustration
Anton Emdin

Greeting Card
Glenn McCoy

TV Animation
Patrick McHale, Creator (Over The Garden Wall)

Feature Animation
Tomm Moore, Director, (Song of the Sea)

Advertising / Product Illustration
Ed Steckley

Book Illustration
Marla Frazee (The Farmer and the Clown)

Magazine Gag Cartoon
Liza Donnelly

Graphic Novel
Jules Feiffer (Kill My Mother)

Comic Book
Jason Latour (Southern Bastards)

Online Comics – Short Form
Danielle Corsetto (Girls with Slingshots)

Online Comics – Long Form
Minna Sundberg (Stand Still, Stay Silent)

Newspaper Panel Cartoon
Hilary Price (Rhymes with Orange)

Editorial Cartoon
Michael Ramirez

Newspaper Comic Strip
Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine)

The Reuben Award
Roz Chast

Special honorees this year were Mort Drucker and Jeff Keane. The kudos were handed out at the annual NCS dinner, held this year in Washington DC, and Michael Cavna was there to record the scene, which like just about everything else in comics, was notable for featuring six female winners, a record!

On Saturday night, in a ballroom holding hundreds of top cartoonists, the organizers might as well have piped in Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” because for only the third time in the event’s six-decade-plus history, a woman — the New Yorker’s Roz Chast — received the group’s big honor, the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year. And her trophy capped what may well be the event’s winningest night ever for female writers and artists, as six women won in the 16 competitive categories.

Tom Spurgeon has a little commentary on the winners here, and notes that the NCS has to move forward, just as newspapers make up less and less of the cartooning world, hence the awards for animation and graphic novels and webcomics, while still battling a bit of “old skool” sensibilities as an organization. I would say that Girls with Slingshots is exactly the kind of webcomic that you’d expect the NCS to honor—but it’s also a webcomic deeply deserving of recognition. So despite the changing of the guard nature  of the awards they kind of turned out okay.

johnmartz:

For the third consecutive year I designed the poster for the National Cartoonist Society Foundation’s Jay Kennedy Scholarship for Cartooning.

The deadline is fast approaching — applications must be postmarked by December 15th, 2012. Any North American student who will be in their junior or senior year of college or university during the 2013-2014 academic year is eligible. You do not have to be an art major. More information at www.cartoonistfoundation.org

This is a great opportunity for any student who draws comics, does animation, or dabbles in any sort of cartooning. Only a few days left to get your application in the mail!

johnmartz:

For the second year in a row, I had the honour of creating the poster for the Jay Kennedy Memorial Scholarship.

Awarded by the National Cartoonists Society Foundation, the scholarship gives $5000 to a promising student cartoonist every year. The scholarship is open to any student in the US, Canada and Mexico, and you do not need to be an art student.

More information is available at the NCSF website, and I encourage all students with cartooning in their blood to apply.

You can see the poster I did for last year’s scholarship.

EDIT: Here’s a high-res printable PDF of this year’s poster if you want to print it out for your school or comic shop.

Attention all cartoonists and illustrators! The deadline for the National Cartoonists Society’s annual division awards fast approaches.

Submissions are open to anyone, there is no fee, and you are even encouraged to submit the work of others.

Categories include newspaper illustration, gag cartoons, greeting cards, comic strips, magazine illustration, book illustration, editorial cartooning, advertising illustration, comic books, graphic novels, and animation.

I encourage everyone to submit; the annual awards weekends are fun events, with parties, presentations, and schmoozing with a who’s who of cartooning. The deadline is February 6. Visit the NCS’s site for full details.

A quick reminder to all students — the December 15 deadline for the $5000 Jay Kennedy Scholarship is fast approaching.

The scholarship is available to all North American students who draw cartoons or comics regardless of your school or field of study. Visit the National Cartoonists Society Foundation for more details.

A big congratulations to our own Matt Forsythe whose book Ojingogo was nominated this week for both a Doug Wright Award and a National Cartoonist Society award!

Attention students: the deadline for the Jay Kennedy Scholarship is approaching fast.

Applicants must be college students in the United States, Canada or Mexico that will be in their Junior or Senior year of college during the 2009-2010 academic year. Applicants DO NOT have to be art majors to be eligible for this scholarship.

Along with a completed entry form, applicants are required to send 5 samples of their own cartooning artwork; noting if and where the work has been published (either print or web).

DEADLINE: ENTRIES MUST BE POSTMARKED BY FEBRUARY 6, 2009

The application form and full instructions can be found at the NCS Foundation website.

Last year, a $5,000 scholarship and a trip to the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award convention were given to Juana Medina who recounts the experience at Mike Lynch’s blog.