Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

?Ri­to Allen, my fa­ther, was a gen­er­ous man. Dad­dy give away all kind of thing, to all kind of peo­ple, and that is one rea­son why he was so pop­u­lar.

It wasn't the on­ly rea­son, mind you. Dad­dy was a bright man, and a bold en­tre­pre­neur. He used to have this big, gasp­ing laugh that was con­ta­gious, you couldn't help but laugh too when you hear it. And he was good look­ing too bad, a re­al ladies' man. To me I find he was a good fa­ther. He used to read plen­ty, and be­tween he and my moth­er I al­ways had some­thing to read and al­ways want­ed to read it. I don't know if is he I get my writ­ing gift from, but I sure is he I get my first type­writer from. He wasn't a re­al bub­bly fel­la, and I can't re­mem­ber him ever get­ting ex­cit­ed about my writ­ing, but I know for sure he went by Ashe on Ed­ward Street in town and buy a ba­by blue elec­tric type­writer for me once he re­alise I was se­ri­ous about writ­ing.

Is a com­bi­na­tion of them rea­sons, plus some oth­ers, that is why I name The Allen Prize for Young Writ­ers af­ter my fa­ther. I want the Allen Prize to have the same gen­er­ous spir­it he had, and I want it to make a name for it­self just the same way how he do it for he­s­elf. With the help of the board and com­mit­tee mem­bers, plus all kind of oth­er peo­ple who giv­ing sup­port along the way, The Allen Prize go­ing to start work in Sep­tem­ber. The main idea is to give prizes to teenage writ­ers, youths from 12-19 years who writ­ing ei­ther po­ems, fic­tion, cre­ative non-fic­tion or dra­ma. We al­so go­ing to be giv­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al sem­i­nars once a term, in T&T, for young writ­ers. And then, at the end of the school year, we go­ing and give a work­shop for the youths who win Allen Prizes in the com­pe­ti­tion.

When I was a youth that ba­by blue type­writer make all the dif­fer­ence to me. I used to spend hours, days, weeks tap­ping away at the keys. Some­how the ten­sion in the keys was a lit­tle too strong and they used to make lit­tle holes in the pa­per when you was typ­ing. For years all my sto­ries and po­ems and plays had spots on the pa­per so that, when you hold the pa­per up to the light, it look like lit­tle stars twin­kling through the sheets. I loved that type­writer, and some­how I think it was a part of why I am a pro­fes­sion­al writer to­day. An­oth­er big in­flu­ence on me was win­ning the Cli­co Po­et­ry Day Po­et­ry Writ­ing Com­pe­ti­tion when I was a teenag­er my­self. I win it in the sec­ond year it was around, 1990, and it was to me a sig­nal that, hear nah, you could write for truth; look, some­body go give you mon­ey to do it. Is a sense of pride, of pos­si­bil­i­ty, of the fu­ture that Cli­co give me in that prize.

I want to re­turn them feel­ings, that sense of pride and pos­si­bil­i­ty that peo­ple give me. I want oth­er young peo­ple to ex­pe­ri­ence the sen­sa­tion that some­body be­lieve in them and see their po­ten­tial to be a great writer. I want young writ­ers to­day to have the en­cour­age­ment I get, silent­ly, from my dad­dy, and pub­licly from Cli­co. That is why I, with so much help from oth­er peo­ple, start­ed The Allen Prize. Now is time to make that in­ten­tion a re­al­i­ty. Is time to put my mon­ey where my mouth (and pen) is. Sep­tem­ber com­ing up fast fast and I have to con­cen­trate my at­ten­tion on bring­ing The Allen Prize to all the sec­ondary schools in T&T. It go be plen­ty work. I ent fraid. I go­ing brave, with God and good friends on my side. I hope it work. Don't be sur­prise if I call you ask­ing to sup­port the prize, be­cause we en­dow­ment small and we dreams big and big dreams does cost big mon­ey.

From Sep­tem­ber, God will­ing, I go­ing and work full time for my dream. It mean giv­ing up some oth­er things. One of them things is this col­umn. For about four years now I writ­ing in this space and I ent go lie, when I fin­ish this col­umn to­day I go cry a lit­tle bit be­cause it was such a ho­n­our and a priv­i­lege to be able to write, week af­ter week, about na­tion­al and per­son­al is­sues in the Guardian. I know I was one of a small few, and I nev­er ever take that light­ly. When I write here, I was writ­ing not just for me but for all the vot­ers, all the par­ents, all the young peo­ple, all the women, and every oth­er con­stituen­cy that I rep­re­sent at the time.

You know that as a writer, lit­er­a­ture was al­ways close to my heart and more than one col­umn I put out was about writ­ing and the need for bet­ter writ­ing and more pub­lish­ing in the re­gion. The Allen Prize is a tan­gi­ble com­mit­ment to mak­ing that hap­pen. In the same way, as a moth­er and some­one who be­lieve in chil­dren's rights, I want to give sup­port to young peo­ple–sup­port be­yond the words I could write in this space. Of course, just be­cause I giv­ing up the Guardian don't mean that I giv­ing up writ­ing. I can't stop that, I go dead if I stop writ­ing. You could look for me on my Web site, lisaallen-agos­ti­ni.com, and you could look out for the books and po­ems I go be writ­ing too. But in the mean­while, is bye-bye for now. Part­ing is such sweet sor­row.