ARCHIVED EVENT: Caribbean Books and Literature

July 25, 2024 | 6:30 PM at Trinity St Paul Gardens

Join us for an evening of Caribbean literature with acclaimed authors Matthew Dawkins, Zalika Reid-Benta, and Denise DaCosta, in partnership with Trinity St. Paul. Discover the rich cultural narratives and vibrant stories as these writers share their insights and inspirations. Don’t miss this captivating exploration of Caribbean storytelling and heritage.

Grab your ticket here.

Diaspora Dialogues is pleased to announce a partnership with Trinity-St.Pauls, a community and cultural hub that features a world-renowned concert hall and affordable performance, office and instruction space for many artistic, cultural, social justice and social service organizations. We will be partnering to bring their community and ours access to DD’s unique and respected programming, starting with Caribbean Books and Literature, on July 25th.

About the Presenters

Matthew is a Jamaican award-winning author and poet. His work explores subject matters including adolescence, race, nationhood, and mental health. His work has also been featured in Westwind Poetry, Indolent Books, Pinhole Poetry, and more. Matthew was the 2022-2023 Student Writer in Residence at Western University where he graduated with a B.A. in Arts and Humanities and English Literature. Until We Break is his debut novel.

Zalika Reid-Benta is a Canadian writer.Her debut novel River Mumma was shortlisted for the 2024 Trillium Book Award and has received starred reviews from publications such as Publishers Weekly and Booklist Magazine. River Mumma is an Amazon Books Editors’ Pick for Best Science Fiction and Fantasy and was selected a Best Book of the Month for

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.

Denise Da Costa’s debut novel And the Walls Came Down, was longlisted for the 2024 Toronto Book Award. Her work has been included in the anthology Subdivided: City-Building in an Age of Hyper-Diversity and the journal, Proudflesh: New Afkrikan Journal of Culture, Politics, & Consciousness. She is a MFA, Creative Writing student at UBC. Her work explores the complications of love, mental health, and the impact of gender, race, and class on identity.