Olive Senior facts for kids

Olive Marjorie Senior (born 23 December 1941) is a famous writer from Jamaica. She writes poetry, novels (long stories), short stories, and non-fiction (books about real facts). She lives in Toronto, Canada.

Olive Senior has won many important awards for her writing. In 2005, she received the Musgrave Gold Medal from the Institute of Jamaica for her amazing work in literature. She also won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. From 2021 to 2024, she was chosen as the Poet Laureate of Jamaica. This means she was the official poet for her country.

Life and Career

Olive Senior grew up in a rural area of Trelawny, Jamaica. She was the seventh of ten children in her family. She went to Montego Bay High School for Girls.

When she was 19, Olive Senior started working at the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper in Kingston. Later, she worked for the Jamaica Information Service. She then won a scholarship to study journalism in Wales and Canada.

While at university, she started writing her own stories and poems. After returning to Jamaica, she worked on public relations and writing speeches. She also edited a journal called Social and Economic Studies at the University of the West Indies. In 1982, she became an editor for the Jamaica Journal at the Institute of Jamaica.

In 1987, Olive Senior won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for her first book of short stories, called Summer Lightning. After a big storm called Hurricane Gilbert hit Jamaica in 1988, she moved to Europe. She lived in different countries like Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. In the early 1990s, she settled in Toronto, Canada.

In 2019, she received the Matt Cohen Award in Canada. This award honors writers for their whole career. In 2021, she was officially named Jamaica's Poet Laureate. In 2024, she was recognized as a Royal Society of Literature International Writer. This is a special award that celebrates writers from all over the world.

Literary Works

Olive Senior has written five collections of poems. These include Talking of Trees (1985), Gardening in the Tropics (1994), Over the Roofs of the World (2005), Shell (2007), and Hurricane Watch: New and Collected Poems (2022). A reviewer once said that Olive Senior pays close attention to both simple things, like mango trees, and big issues, like fairness and the environment.

Her book of short stories, Summer Lightning (1986), won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Other short story collections include Arrival of the Snake Woman (1989) and Discerner of Hearts (1995). Her most recent collection, The Pain Tree (2015), won the main prize at the 2016 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.

Her first novel, Dancing Lessons (2011), was nominated for the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize.

Olive Senior has also written non-fiction books. These include The Message Is Change (1972), about a Jamaican politician named Michael Manley. She also wrote A-Z of Jamaican Heritage (1984), which was later updated as Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage (2004). Another non-fiction book is Working Miracles: Women's Lives in the English-Speaking Caribbean (1991).

Her book Dying To Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal came out in 2014. It was about people from the West Indies who helped build the Panama Canal. This book also won the non-fiction category of the OCM Bocas Prize in 2015.

Olive Senior's writing often explores what it means to be from the Caribbean. She talks about different cultures and backgrounds. She once said that she is proud to be Jamaican and represents many different races.

Her stories have been turned into plays and broadcast on the BBC and CBC. She also wrote a radio play called Window for the CBC. Her work is found in many different collections of stories and poems.

Her books, especially Summer Lightning and Gardening in the Tropics, are used as textbooks in schools and universities around the world.

Translations

Olive Senior's books have been translated into other languages. For example, ZigZag and Eclairs de chaleur were translated into French. Zomerweerlicht was translated into Dutch, and Das Erscheinen der Schlangenfrau into German.

In 2014, a special book of her poetry was released. It was called Un Pipirit M'a Dit/A Little Bird Told Me and had poems in both English and French. Her book Gardening in the Tropics was also translated into Arabic in 2017.

Selected Awards and Honours

• 1987: Commonwealth Writers' Prize, for Summer Lightning and Other Stories
• 1988: Silver Musgrave Medal
• 1994: Hawthornden Fellow, Scotland
• 1995: F. G. Bressani Literary Prize for Gardening in the Tropics
• 2003: Norman Washington Manley Foundation Award for Excellence (for preserving cultural heritage in Jamaica)
• 2004: Gold Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica
• 2005: Humanities Scholar, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados
• 2005: Over the Roofs of the World was nominated for the Governor-General's Literary Award for Poetry
• 2005: Runner-up for the Casa de las Américas Prize
• 2006: Shell was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award
• 2011: Dancing Lessons was nominated for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Book Prize
• 2011: Isabel Sissons Canadian Children's Story Award
• 2015: OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, winner of the non-fiction category
• 2016: OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, winner of the fiction category and the overall winner
• 2021: Appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica
• 2024: Elected as Royal Society of Literature International Writer