Zalika Reid-Benta

Zalika Reid-Benta is a Canadian writer,[1] whose debut short story collection Frying Plantain won the 23rd annual Danuta Gleed Literary Award,[2] recognizing the best first collection of short fiction by a Canadian author published in 2019 in the English language. Frying Plantain also won the 2020 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in literary fiction.[3] The book is a collection of linked short stories centering on the coming of age of Kara Davis, a young Jamaican-Canadian girl growing up in the Eglinton West neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario.[4]

Zalika Reid-Benta
BornToronto, Ontario, Canada
OccupationAuthor
Website
www.zalikareidbenta.com//

Frying Plantain was shortlisted for the 2020 Toronto Book Awards,[5] it was a longlisted nominee for the 2019 Giller Prize[6] and was shortlisted for the 2020 Trillium Book Award.[7] Frying Plantain is currently nominated for the 2021 White Pine Award[8] and was nominated for the 2020 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award presented by the Ontario Library Association.[9] Reid-Benta is also the winner of the 2019 Byblacks People's Choice Awards for Best Author.

Reid-Benta studied at the University of Toronto earning an Hons. BA in English and Cinema Studies with a minor in Caribbean Studies, and she subsequently earned an MFA in fiction at Columbia University.[4] She attended the 2017 Writers Studio at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and was a 2019 John Gardener Fiction Fellow at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference.[10] Prior to the publication of her book, she was mentored by writers Paul Beatty, Janice Galloway, Victor LaValle, George Elliott Clarke and Olive Senior.[4]

References


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