Education and early literary career Born in Trinidad, Allen-Agostini attended Lower Morvant Government School and
Bishop Anstey High School, before going on to earn a first-class honours degree in English at the
University of the West Indies, St Augustine, as well as studying stagecraft, having been an actor with the
Trinidad Theatre Workshop. In 2001 an
Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship enabled her to spend five months at
The Washington Post, before returning to work in various capacities at the
Trinidad Guardian until 2010. She has also written for the
Caribbean Review of Books. Her Young Adult science-fiction book,
The Chalice Project, was published in 2008, and in the same year she co-edited and contributed to the crime anthology
Trinidad Noir. She was awarded a scholarship by global advocacy organisation
Women Deliver to attend their May 2013 conference in Malaysia. Also in 2013 she was shortlisted for the
Hollick Arvon Prize for emerging Caribbean writers and was the 2014 Dame Hilda Bynoe writer-in-residence at
St George's University in
Grenada. She joined the
Trinidad and Tobago Newsday team as a freelance reporter in 2017. That year, her YA novel
Home Home won third-prize in the
Burt Prize for Caribbean Young Adult Caribbean Literature and was published in 2018 by
Papillote Press. In 2019, she started the Caribbean feminist stand-up comedy partnership FemComTT with Louris Lee-Sing, performing at events as "Just Lisa" and "Lyrix", as well as co-hosting the online chat show ''The Givin' Trouble Show''. Allen-Agostini contributed "The Cook" to 2019's
New Daughters of Africa, edited by
Margaret Busby for
Myriad Editions, and was a participant in an event showcasing the anthology at the
NGC Bocas Lit Fest.
The Bread the Devil Knead (2021) In May 2021, Myriad published her debut adult novel,
The Bread the Devil Knead – described as a "rich, raw and urgent
domestic noir novel of sex and survival set in Trinidad’s capital". Reviewer Joanne Owen wrote of it: "Every perfectly-placed word, every perfectly-formed sentence rings with truth and strikes deep. ... Raw and achingly beautiful, this really is remarkable." According to Literandra: "It is a book that will have you feeling breathless and angry, disturbed yet understood. It is honest, raw, and is likely to resonate with a lot of women around the world as it mercilessly exposes what it can mean to be a woman in a world run by men, and what it means to live at the intersection of gender, race, and poverty." The review in
Scroll.in concluded: "
The Bread the Devil Knead is a force and Lisa Allen-Agostini has set the standards very high for not just women’s writing, but global literary fiction. Bravo!" Among others who praised the novel are
Kei Miller ("You dip into the first page and don't come up for breath until the last... Thoroughly enjoyable") and
Nalo Hopkinson ("Strips you down to raw nerve to build you back up again. Allen-Agostini has an unswerving eye"). In March 2022,
The Bread the Devil Knead was announced as having been included on the longlist for the
Women's Prize for Fiction, going on to make the shortlist of six. ==Awards and recognition==