Zalika Reid-Benta
Zalika Reid-Benta is a Canadian writer, whose debut short story collection Frying Plantain won the 23rd annual Danuta Gleed Literary Award, 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. 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.
Frying Plantain was a longlisted nominee for the 2019 Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the 2020 Trillium Book Award. Frying Plantain was nominated for the 2020 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award presented by the Ontario Library Association. 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. 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. Prior to the publication of her book, she was mentored by writers Paul Beatty, Janice Galloway, Victor LaValle, George Elliott Clarke and Olive Senior.
