Olive senior biography templates

Jamaican author (born 1941)

Olive Marjorie Senior (born 23 December 1941)^[1] is a Jamaican poet, novelist, short story and non-fiction writer based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

She was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal in 2005 by the Institute of Jamaica for her contributions to literature.^[2] Other awards she has won include the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.^[3][4] Senior was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2021, serving in the post until 2024.^[5]

Life and career

Born in rural Jamaica in Trelawny, Cockpit Country, Olive Senior was the seventh of 10 children.^[1] She attended Montego Bay High School for Girls.

At the age of 19, she joined the staff of the Jamaica Gleaner in Kingston and later worked with the Jamaica Information Service.^[6] Senior later won a scholarship to study journalism at the Thomson Foundation in Cardiff, Wales,^[7] and as a Commonwealth s