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  Jamaican Canadian Writer Christina Cooke in the Running for $10,000 Prize Earlier this week, Rakuten Kobo announced the shortlist for its 2025 Emerging Writer Prize—and one Caribbean Canadian new author is among the finalists. With its Emerging Writer Prize, Rakuten Kobo aims to raise the profile of debut authors by recognizing exceptional books written by first-time Canadian authors in three categories: Literary Fiction, Nonfiction, and one of three types of genre fiction—Romance, Speculative Fiction, or Mystery. One of the nominated authors is Christina Cooke, for her novel  Broughtupsy . Cooke, a Jamaican Canadian fiction writer and essayist—not a con artist, she notes—is originally from Jamaica and now resides in New York City as a Canadian citizen. Broughtupsy  tells the story of Akúa, a young woman who travels to Jamaica hoping to reconnect with her estranged older sister, Tamika. Over the course of three fateful weeks, the sisters revisit significant places from ...

Frying Plantain is cooking up cold cash for first time author  Toronto's Zalika Reid-Benta by Stephen Weir Two Days in June. Two $10,000 prizes.  Last month young Zalika Reid-Benta won two different literary Prizes in the space of two days!  On June 25th her book, Frying Plantain won the $10,000 Kobo Emerging Writer’s Literary Fiction Prize.  The day before it was announced that she had won the  Writers’ Union of Canada’s annual   $10.000 Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Zalika Reid-Benta, a Toronto-based Jamaican Canadian novelist, burst onto the literary scene last year when the House of Anansi Press published her first book.  Her debut story collection Frying Plantain is a series of linked short tales centering on the coming of age of Kara Davis, a young Jamaican Canadian girl growing up in “Little Jamaica” (the Eglinton West neighbourhood in Toronto.) Kara is caught in the middle between her Canadian identity and her de...