Zalika Reid-Benta

ZALIKA REID-BENTA is a Toronto-based writer. Her debut short story collection FRYING PLANTAIN won the 23rd annual Danuta Gleed Literary Award and won the 2020 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in literary fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2020 Toronto Book Awards, the 2020 Trillium Book Award, and longlisted for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize. FRYING PLANTAIN was nominated for the 2020 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award presented by the Ontario Library Association and the 2021 White Pine Award. Zalika is also the winner of the 2019 Byblacks People’s Choice Awards for Best Author.

FRYING PLANTAIN has been on numerous “must read” lists from Bustle, Refinery29, Chatelaine Magazine, Toronto Star, Globe and Mail and more. It was also listed as one of Indigo’s 50 “Best Books of 2019”. Zalika was the June 2019 Writer in Residence for Open Book and she was listed in CBC’s “6 Canadian Writers to Watch in 2019”. She received an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, was the 2019 John Gardner Fiction Fellow at the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference and is an alumnus of the 2017 Banff Writers’ Studio.

Her second book and debut novel RIVER MUMMA will be published by Canada in August 2023. RIVER MUMMA is a magical realist novel that incorporates Jamaican folklore and follows Alicia, a young Black woman having a quarter-life crisis, while adventuring through the streets of Toronto. 

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