Lisa Allen-Agostini to read from Death In The Dry River; gets US fellowship

Award-winning author Lisa Allen-Agostini will read from her new historical crime novella Death In The Dry River at a pop-up reading and book signing at Metropolitan Book Suppliers and Café, 12 Ariapita Avenue, Woodbrook, on August 24.

It will be her last public event before she leaves Trinidad on September 1 to begin a Fall 2024 Fellowship at the Iowa International Writing Program (IWP), a media release said.

The US Embassy, Port of Spain, nominated her for the programme and her participation in the 11-week IWP residency at the University of Iowa is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State.

There are 36 participants in this year’s cohort. Previous TT IWP Fellows are Earl Lovelace, and the late Samuel Selvon, Michael Anthony and Wayne Brown, the release said

Death in the Dry River is the first Caribbean book to be published by 1000Volt Press, which was co-founded by Trinidadian designer Keifel Agostini and his wife Victoria Raschke, a US author and editor.

The book’s September 7 launch will be a highlight of the 2024 Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival (BCLF), in Brooklyn, New York. At the BCLF book launch TT-US author P Dejeli Clarke will interview Allen-Agostini about her historical crime novella.

The short fictional work is set in 1932 in the British colonial city of Port of Spain. When Johnson “Sonny” Stone, a black police constable, stumbles on the dead body of a calypsonian in the foetid Dry River, he tumbles into a conspiracy that reaches through every stratum of this mongrel society. The book’s villain is loosely based on the real historical criminal Boysie Singh.

Allen-Agostini’s novel The Bread the Devil Knead was shortlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction. A former journalist, she co-wrote John Arnold's memoir Tobago Son.

She is the author of the YA novels The Chalice Project and Home Home and the collection of poems Swallowing the Sky. Allen-Agostini co-edited the crime anthology Trinidad Noir and the 2024 NGC Bocas Lit Fest youth anthology The Travelling Journal.

The August 24 event is free and open to the public and runs from 11.30 am-1 pm.

For more info: follow her on social media: X: @AllenAgostini, IG: @lisaallenagostini, FB: Facebook.com/trinidadwriter