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| Olive Senior |
Olive Marjorie Senior is a Jamaican poet, novelist, short story and non-fiction writer based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal in 2005 by the Institute of Jamaica for her contributions to literature. Senior was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2021.
Olive Senior Short biography
Olive Senior is the prize-winning author of a seventeen
books of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Born in Jamaica, she has travelled
extensively and has now settled in Toronto. She visits Jamaica frequently and
the island and the wider Caribbean remain central to her work. She teaches
writing internationally and has read her work and lectured at many
international venues over the years.
Olive Senior was born and brought up in Jamaica and educated
in Jamaica and Canada. She is a graduate of Montego Bay High School and
Carleton University, Ottawa.
She started her career as a journalist with the Daily
Gleaner and later entered the world of publishing. She was editor of two of the
Caribbean's leading journals - Social and Economic Studies at the University of
the West Indies and Jamaica Journal, published by Institute of Jamaica
Publications of which she was also Managing Director. She left Jamaica in 1989,
spent some years in Europe and since 1993 has been based in Toronto.
The Caribbean nevertheless remains the focus of her work,
starting with her prizewinning collection of stories, Summer Lightning which
won the Commonwealth Writers Prize followed by Arrival of the Snake-Woman and
Discerner of Hearts. Her novel, Dancing Lessons was published by Cormorant
Books in Canada 2011 and The Pain Tree, a collection of stories in the spring
of 2015. Her illustrated children's books are Birthday Suit and Anna Carries
Water.
Her poetry books are Shell, (shortlisted for the Pat Lowther
Award), Over the roofs of the world (shortlisted for Canada's
Governor-General's Literary Award and Cuba's Casa de las Americas Prize),
Gardening in the Tropics (winner of the F.J. Bressani Literary Prize), and
Talking of Trees. A bilingual edition (English/French) of her poetry was
published by Le Castor Astral in 2014 under the title Un Pipiri m'a dit/A
Little Bird Told Me.
Olive Senior's non-fiction works on Caribbean culture
include Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama
Canal (2015 OCM Bocas Literary Prize for Non-Fiction), the A-Z of Jamaican
Heritage, Working Miracles: Women's Lives in the English-Speaking Caribbean and
The Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage.
Her work has been widely taught in schools and universities
internationally. Summer Lightning has been a literature textbook in Caribbean
schools and Gardening in the Tropics has been a poetry textbook for the CAPE
syllabus as well the International baccalaureate.
She is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes. Her work
in recording and disseminating the cultural heritage of Jamaica was honoured in
2003 with the Norman Washington Manley Foundation Award for Excellence and in
2004 with the Gold Medal of the Institute of Jamaica. She is also the recipient
of the Centenary Medal and the Silver Medal of the Institute of Jamaica for
contributions to literature. She was named Humanities Scholar 2005 by the
University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. She is also the recipient
of Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council works in progress grants.
Olive Senior has worked internationally as a creative
writing teacher and lecturer on Caribbean literature and culture. She is on the
faculty of the Humber School for Writers, Toronto and has taught in the writing
programmes at University of Toronto, St Lawrence University, and Barnard
College, Columbia University, New York. She has also led writing workshops at
the University of Miami, the University of the West Indies, and in the Bahamas,
Bermuda, the USA, UK and France and other places.
Her writing residences have included Ecla Aquitaine
Résidences de la Prévôté, Bordeaux, France; University of Adelaide, Australia;
University of Alberta and Banff International Writing Studio, Canada;, at the
University of the West Indies in Jamaica and Trinidad. She has been an Arts
Council of England Visiting International Writer, a Hawthornden Fellow in
Scotland, and Dana Distinguished International Writer at St Lawrence
University.
Olive Senior's work has been broadcast on both sides of the
Atlantic, including the BBC Book at Bedtime and the CBC Festival of Fiction.
Her short story 'You Think I Mad, Miss?' was produced and performed as 'Mad
Miss' by Theatre Archipelago in 2005 at Artword Theatre, Toronto. She wrote the
radio play 'Window' for the CBC and was internet Poet-in-residence for the
Commonwealth Institute in 1999. Her work has been included in the Best Poems on
the Underground published by London Transport and she is a featured poet on The
Poetry Archive.
Her work is represented in numerous anthologies worldwide
and has been translated into several languages.
