Zalika Reid-Benta is a Canadian writer. Her debut novel River Mumma received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist Magazine. River Mumma was selected as a Best Book of the Month for Amazon and Apple Books in February 2024. It was the October 2023 pick for the CityLine book club and has been listed as one of the best fiction books of 2023 on numerous platforms, including CBC Books, Indigo Books, Kobo Books and The Walrus.
Reid-Benta’s debut short story collection Frying Plantain won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction in 2020. Frying Plantain was longlisted for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and it was shortlisted for the 2020 Toronto Book Award, the 2020 Trillium Book Award, the 2021 White Pine Award and the 2020 Evergreen Award.
Her picture book, Twelve Days of Jamaican Christmas, will be published in 2025.
Selected Media
- CBC – How Staying True to Herself Helped Zalika Reid-Benta Become an Award Winning Author
- Publishers Weekly
- Toronto Star – The writer who makes Toronto thrilling and scary
- Forewords Reviews