Zalika Reid-Benta
From What Happened Next: a podcast about newish books by Nathan Whitlock
April 6, 2026 · 30 min
About this episode
Zalika Reid-Benta discusses her debut book, her relationship with Toronto, and her creative process.
My guest on this episode is Zalika Reid-Benta. Zalika’s debut book was the story collection Frying Plantain, which won the 2020 Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the 2020 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction. It was also shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award, the Trillium Book Award, the White Pine Award, and the Evergreen Award, and was longlisted for the 2020 Giller Prize. Zalika was the 2019 and 2023 winner of the ByBlacks People’s Choice Award for Best Author. Her most recent book is the novel River Mumma , published in 2023 by Penguin Canada. That book was shortlisted for the 2024 Trillium Book Award. The Walrus said that “amid a crash course in Jamaican folklore, Reid-Benta’s novel takes a gleeful swipe at everything from Toronto’s unreliable transit system to the cult of celebrity.” Zalika and I talk about her current relationship with Toronto as a city, which features so heavily in her fiction, about her irritation with readers who insist on seeing her work as autobiographical, and about training her agent to accept her chaotic creative process. This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock , in partnership with The Walrus…
People in this episode
Host: Nathan Whitlock
Guest: Zalika Reid-Benta
Topics covered
- Jamaican folklore
- Toronto
- literary awards
- creative process
- autobiographical fiction
Keywords
- Zalika Reid-Benta
- Frying Plantain
- River Mumma
- Toronto
- literary awards
- creative process
- Jamaican folklore
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Penguin Canada, The Walrus
Books & works: Frying Plantain, River Mumma
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