Olive Senior

Life and career

Born in rural Jamaica in Trelawny, Cockpit Country, Olive Senior was the seventh of 10 children. Senior attended Montego Bay High School For Girls. At nineteen, she joined the staff of the Jamaica Gleaner in Kingston and later worked with the Jamaica Information Service. Senior later won a scholarship to study journalism at the Thomson Foundation in Cardiff, Wales and as a Commonwealth scholar attended Carleton University School of Journalism in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

While at university she began writing fiction and poetry. On her return to Jamaica, she worked as a freelancer in public relations, publishing, and speech writing before joining the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of the West Indies, where she edited the journal Social and Economic Studies (1972–77). In 1982 she joined the Institute of Jamaica as editor of the Jamaica Journal.

In 1987 Senior won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for her first collection of stories. 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.

Literary works

Senior has published three collections of poems: Talking of Trees (1985), Gardening in the Tropics (1994), and Over the Roofs of the World (2005). Her short story collection Summer Lightning (1986) won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize; it was followed by Arrival of the Snake Woman (1989, 2009) and Discerner of Hearts (1995). 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.

Her first novel, Dancing Lessons (Cormorant Books, 2011), was shortlisted for the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize in the Canada region.

Her non-fiction works include The Message Is Change (1972), about Michael Manley's first election victory; A-Z of Jamaican Heritage (1984, expanded and republished as Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage in 2004); and Working Miracles: Women's Lives in the English-Speaking Caribbean (1991).

Senior's most recent non-fiction book, Dying To Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal, was published in September 2014 – 100 years after the opening of the Panama Canal, 15 August 1914. On 1 April 2015 the book was shortlisted for the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, winning the non-fiction category.

An extended critical evaluation of Senior's work can be found in Olive Senior by Denise deCaires Narain (2011), published by Northcote House Publishers (UK) in collaboration with the British Council as part of the Writers and Their Work series.

Senior's work often addresses questions of Caribbean identity in terms of gender and ethnicity. She has said: "I've had to deal with race because of who I am and how I look. In that process, I've had to determine who I am. I do not think you can be all things to all people. As part of that process, I decided I was a Jamaican. I represent many different races and I'm not rejecting any of them to please anybody. I'm just who I am and you have to accept me or not."

Her work has been adapted as drama and broadcast by the BBC and CBC, and she also wrote the radio play Window for the CBC. Her writing features in a wide range of anthologies including Her True-True Name (eds Elizabeth Wilson and Pamela Mordecai, 1989), Daughters of Africa (ed. Margaret Busby, 1992), The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry (eds Ian McDonald and Stewart Brown, 1992), Concert of Voices: An Anthology of World Writing in English (ed. Victor J. Ramraj, 1994), The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Tenth Annual Collection (eds Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, 1997), The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry (ed. 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.

Her work is taught in schools and universities internationally, with Summer Lightning and Gardening in the Tropicsin particular being used as educational textbooks.

Translations

Recent translations include: ZigZag, translated into French by Christine Raguet, Geneva: Zoe, 2010; Eclairs de chaleur, translated into French by Christine Raguet, Geneva: Zoe, 2011, Depuis la Terrasse et autres nouvelles (translated into French by Marie-Annick Montout), special edition, Mauritius: L'Atelier d'écriture, 2011; Zomerweerlicht (trans. Marie Luyten), Netherlands: Ambo/Novib, 1991; Das Erscheinen der Schlangenfrau (trans: Wolfgang Binder) Germany: Dipa/Verlag, 1996, and Unionsverlag, 2003; a Book Club Selection, The Berne Declaration, Switzerland, 1996.

A bilingual (English and French) book of Senior's poetry, Un Pipirit M'a Dit/A Little Bird Told Me was released in 2014.

Selected awards and honours