Zalika Reid-Benta wins $10K Danuta Gleed Award for best first short story collection
CBC Books | | Posted: June 29, 2020 4:53 PM | Last Updated: June 29, 2020
Toronto writer Zalika Reid-Benta has won the Danuta Gleed Award for her book Frying Plantain.
The $10,000 award annually recognizes the best first short story collection by a Canadian writer.
Frying Plantain features a series of interconnected stories with a young Black woman named Kara Davis living in Toronto.
The coming-of-age story explores race, class and identity as Kara learns to navigate and reconcile her Canadian nationality and Jamaican heritage.
"Reid-Benta writes her characters into existence with great assurance, skill and tenderness," said the jury in a statement.
Frying Plantain was also longlisted for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the 2020 Kobo Emerging Writer Award for fiction.
The two runners up were Nova Scotia's Christy Ann Conlin for Watermark, and Newfoundland's Terry Doyle for Dig. They each receive $1,000.
Last year's winner was Carrianne Leung for That Time I Loved You.
Other past winners include David Bezmozgis, Ian Williams and Heather O'Neill.