Olive Senior

Olive Senior is a Jamaican now living in Toronto, Canada. She is the author of over a dozen books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction; her latest is the poetry book Shell. Her novel Dancing Lessons will be published in spring 2011. Her short story collection Summer Lightning won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and her poetry book Over the Roofs of the World was shortlisted for Canada's Governor-General's Award for Literature. Her other books include Arrival of the Snake-Woman, Discerner of Hearts (fiction); Talking of Trees, Gardening in the Tropics (poetry); Working Miracles: Women's Lives in the English Speaking Caribbean and The Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage.

She is the recipient of many Fellowships and Awards including the Norman Washington Manley Foundation Award for Excellence (preservation of cultural heritage - Jamaica) in 2002 and the prestigious Gold Medal of the Institute of Jamaica 2004. She was the 2005 Humanities Scholar at UWI, Cave Hill, Barbados, and has been Writer in Residence at several institutions including the University of Alberta, the Banff International Writing Studio, the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and UWI, Trinidad, and the University of Adelaide. 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, Canton, New York.

Her work has been translated into several languages, published in numerous literary journals and anthologies and widely used in schools and universities. Gardening in the Tropics was selected as a poetry textbook for the new CAPE syllabus for Caribbean schools, and Summer Lightning has been a literature textbook on the CXC (Caribbean Examinations Council) syllabus. Gardening in the Tropics has also been on the syllabus for the International Baccalaureate.

She has read at many international venues and lectures and conducts writing workshops internationally. Olive Senior's stories and poems have been broadcast widely, including the BBC Book at Bedtime and Radio 4 (UK), and CBC Radio, among others.
Her short story ‘You Think I Mad, Miss' was produced and performed as ‘Mad Miss' by Theatre Archipelago May 27-June 12 2005 at Artword Theatre, Toronto.