Olive Marjorie Senior (born 23 December 1941)[1] is a Jamaican poet, novelist, short story and non-fiction writer based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
[5] Born in rural Jamaica in Trelawny, Cockpit Country, Olive Senior was the seventh of 10 children.
[9] After Hurricane Gilbert hit Jamaica in 1988, Senior moved to Europe, where she lived in Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, before settling in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in the early 1990s.
Kate Kellaway writing in The Observer noted in a 2022 review: "Olive Senior – the name itself nudging towards becoming a poem – has an inclusive attitude towards her work and never disdains humble things.
She will give full, equal and affectionate attention to mango trees, magpies and even to a Christmas pudding (a recent, gorgeous poem, soaked in rum) as well as to global and racial injustice and environmental issues.
Her most recent collection of stories, The Pain Tree (2015), was the overall winner of the 2016 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, having won the fiction category.
On 1 April 2015 the book was shortlisted for the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, winning the non-fiction category.
Jay Parini, 2005), Best Poems on the Underground (eds Gerard Benson, Judith Chernaik and Cicely Herbert, 2010), So Much Things to Say: 100 Calabash Poets (2010), and numerous others.
Senior's work is taught in schools and universities internationally, with Summer Lightning and Gardening in the Tropics in particular being used as educational textbooks.