Zalika Reid-Benta is the author of Frying Plantain, which won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction. Frying Plantain was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and it was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, the Toronto Book Award, the White Pine Award, and the Evergreen Forest of Reading Award. Zalika served on many juries including the Giller, the Danuta Gleed, the Amazon First Novel Prize, and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award. Zalika’s second book, River Mumma is a magical realist novel inspired by Jamaican folklore.
