Our Team
Meet the dedicated and talented people who oversee the many day-to-day responsibilities at Diaspora Dialogues.
Helen Walsh
President
Helen Walsh is a writer, editor, publisher and producer. She founded Diaspora Dialogues in 2005 and continues to be inspired by its community of writers. From 1998-2017, Walsh was president of Literary Review of Canada and founding director of the Spur festivals. She has worked as a film and digital producer in Toronto, New York and Los Angeles, and her films have played festivals around the world, and been broadcast on television. Her first novel, Pull Focus, will be published in 2021 by ECW Press in Canada, the US and the UK and Walsh is currently adapting it for television.
Zalika Reid-Benta
MANAGER, PROGRAMS
Zalika Reid-Benta is an author. Her second novel The Seacliff Hotel will be published in Spring 2027. In 2024, her debut novel River Mumma (2023) was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award and was listed as one of the best fiction books of 2023 on numerous platforms including CBC Books, Kobo Books, and The Walrus. Her debut story collection Frying Plantain (2019) won the 2020 Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the 2020 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction. Frying Plantain was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award, the Trillium Book Award, the White Pine Award and the Evergreen Award. It was also longlisted for the 2020 Giller Prize. Her picture book, The Twelve Days of Jamaican Christmas was published in Fall 2026 and her second picture book Esme’s Happy Place will be published in 2027. Zalika has written for various publications including Maisonneuve Quarterly, FASHION magazine, and Quill and Quire.
Christian Sharpe
Manager, Business Operations
An arts administrator and manager for the past 10 years, Christian comes to Diaspora Dialogues from a performance background, and a strong belief in the power of mentoring in allowing the artist the keenest opportunity to emerge and find their own identity and voice. As a professional musician Christian has had the good fortune to have wonderful role models and to pass his own experiences on to nurture the next generation of musicians, and is proud to have a hand in growing this capacity for the writers who come to DD and leave transformed.
Tiara Jade Chutkhan
Marketing Coordinator
Tiara Jade Chutkhan is a writer and book blogger working in the Canadian publishing industry. Through her platform, Tiara strives to promote diverse and culturally specific literature. Following the release of her first book, Two Times Removed: An Anthology of Indo-Caribbean Fiction (May 2021), Tiara had the opportunity to speak on several CBC radio stations, including All in a Weekend and In Town and Out. In October 2021, she was featured on the debut episode of CBC’s “Rediscovering Culture” series. In June 2022, she released the sequel, Two Times Removed Volume II: An Anthology of Contemporary Indo-Caribbean Stories. The third and final volume in the series, Two Times Removed Volume III: An Anthology of Indo-Caribbean Futures, was released in May 2024. Tiara’s work has been published in the Caribbean Camera, Brown Gyal Diary, The Radar, Write Magazine, Caribbean Collective Magazine, and Brown Girl Magazine.
