Zalika Reid-Benta, the next big thing for Caribbean-Canadian authors
Stories from Little Jamaica earn Toronto writer a place on Kobo’s Emerging Writer Prize Short List Another week, another Caribbean Canadian author has been nominated for a top national literary prize. Zalika Reid-Benta, a Toronto-based Jamaican Canadian novelist has made the longlist for the Sixth Annual Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. She is in the running for the $10,000 prize for literary fiction for her book Frying Plantain was published last year and nominated for the 2019 Giller Prize, Canada’s most prestigious award. Since then it has won the 2019 Byblacks People’s Choice Awards for Best Author and has been nominated for the Ontario Library Association’s 2020 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award and The Canadian Writers’ Union Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Rakuten Kobo, the Toronto based global eBook and audiobook online seller will be announcing the winners of the Emerging Writer Prize in June. It recognizes exceptional books written by first-time