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6 hours ago

Award-winning author Lisa Allen-Agostini will read from her new historical crime novel, Death In The Dry River, at an impromptu reading and book signing at the 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 fellowship with the Iowa International Writing Program (IWP) in fall 2024, a press release said.

She was nominated for the program by the U.S. Embassy in Port of Spain, and her participation in the 11-week IWP residency at the University of Iowa is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

This year’s cohort includes 36 participants. Previous TT IWP Fellows include Earl Lovelace and the late Samuel Selvon, Michael Anthony and Wayne Brown, the press release said.

Death in the Dry River is the first Caribbean book published by 1000Volt Press, a publishing house co-founded by Trinidadian designer Keifel Agostini and his wife Victoria Raschke, an American author and editor.

The book’s release on September 7 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 story is set in 1932 in the British colonial city of Port of Spain. When Johnson “Sonny” Stone, a black policeman, stumbles upon the body of a calypson musician in the fetid Dry River, he becomes embroiled in a conspiracy that permeates every level of this mixed-race 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-authored John Arnold’s memoir Tobago Son.

She is the author of the young adult novels The Chalice Project and Home Home, and the poetry collection Swallowing the Sky. Allen-Agostini is co-editor of the crime anthology Trinidad Noir and the young adult anthology The Travelling Journal, which will be published by the 2024 NGC Bocas Lit Fest.

The event on August 24 is free and open to the public and will run from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

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