She was a regular contributor to the Colored American magazine and wrote a column for the New Rochelle, New York publication, the Westchester Record-Courier.

[2] Despite long days working, she wrote and published her first book of poetry, a slim volume called Original Poems in 1899.

By 1900 she was working as an assistant theater director at the Robert Gould Shaw Settlement House in Boston, where she continued until about 1914.

Living at the easterly end of the South Fork, she served as the Montaukett tribal historian, a position she held until about 1916.

By 1918 or so, Ward had moved to Chicago, Illinois, with her second husband Anthony Banks, whose job with the Pullman Company was based there.

[3] It seems to be a reaction to the New York State Supreme Court decision in Wyandank Pharaoh v. Jane Benson et al.[6] After that, she turned more of her writing to the African-American experience.

The Banks established and ran the Bush-Banks School of Expression in Chicago, which became a place for black artists to gather and nurture their art.

Du Bois; poet and novelist Countee Cullen; Julia Ward Howe; and actor/singer Paul Robeson among her friends.

She also wrote of the Native American experience in her work, preserving some of the Algonquian Montauk language and folklore, especially during the early part of her career.

In addition to this, Olivia Ward Bush Banks was a member of the Red Cap's Literary Club where she led and delivered an address in the summer of 1924.