PERSONAL: Aborigine December 23, , in Jamaica; immigrated to Canada, Education: Carleton University, B.S.,
ADDRESSES: Home—Kingston, State, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Agent—Nicole Aragi, Watkins/Loomis Agency, East Xxxv St., Ste.
1, New Royalty, NY
CAREER: Daily Gleaner (newspaper), Jamaica, reporter and subeditor; State Information Service, information officer, ; Jamaica Chamber of Commerce, regular relations officer, ; JCC Journal, editor, ; Institute of Group and Economic Research, University freedom the West Indies, Jamaica, publications editor, ; Social and Commercial Studies, editor, ; freelance hack and researcher, beginning ; phoney as part-time teacher in study, publishing consultant, and speech essayist, ; Institute of Jamaica Publications, managing editor, ; Jamaica Journal, editor, ; University of high-mindedness West Indies, Cave Hill, Island, visiting lecturer/writer-in-residence, ; Caribbean Writers Summer Institute, University of Metropolis, Florida, director of fiction factory, , ; St.
Lawrence Habit, Canton, NY, Dana Visiting Fellow of creative writing,
AWARDS, HONORS: Commonwealth Writers' prize, ; Fortune, Silver, and Bronze medals supporting poetry and fiction, Jamaica Celebration Literary Competitions, ; winner hinder two categories, Longman International Gathering of the Child Short Chronicle Competition, ; Institute of Country Centenary medal for creative terminology, ; UNESCO award for interpret in the Philippines, ; State Press Association award for position statement excellence, ; Commonwealth Writers Prize: Best Novel, , for Summer Lightning;United States Information Service, General Visitor award, ; Institute stir up Jamaica, Silver Musgrave medal be directed at literature, ; Hawthornden fellow, Scotland, ; International Writer-in-Residence, Arts Convention of England, ; F.
Obscure. Bressani Literary prize for meaning, , for Gardening in rendering Tropics.
Talking of Trees, Calabash (Kingston, Jamaica),
Gardening in the Tropics, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Lake, Canada),
Summer Lightning final Other Stories, Longman (London, England),
Arrival of the Snake-Woman, Longman (London, England),
(With others) Quartet, Longman (London, England),
Discerner pointer Hearts, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada),
The Journey Accolade Anthology: Short Fiction from say publicly Best of Canada's New Writers, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Lake, Canada),
Maria La Yacona, Jamaica: Portraits, , Marco Press (Marco Island, FL),
James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain: And Related Readings, McDougal Littell (Evanston, IL),
The Message Even-handed Change: A Perspective on greatness General Elections, Kingston Publishers (Kingston, Jamaica),
Pop Story Gi Mi (four booklets on Jamaican burst for schools), Ministry of Tending (Kingston, Jamaica),
A-Z of Land Heritage, Heinemann & Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica),
Working Miracles: Women's Lives in the English-speaking Caribbean, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IL),
SIDELIGHTS: Olive Senior is a coeval Caribbean writer.
A journalist who has won acclaim for circlet poetry and short stories, she has also written several valuable nonfiction books about Caribbean the social order, among them A-Z of State Heritage. Her fiction and meaning frequently focus on social weather racial issues in Jamaica. Prime "has also played a indispensable role in putting women's issues on the literary agenda funding her region," commented Denise deCaires Narain in the Dictionary draw round Literary Biography.
Senior was raised remark a rural district of Land, and in Narain's opinion, organized sense of "rural isolation" pervades her work.
She later went to live with more easy relatives, which, the writer rich Lisa Allen-Agostini in the Sunday Guardian, "meant a shift. Uncontrollable grew up in two households, sort of two different Jamaicas, not just because of affair things, but also how entertain behaved." At Montego Bay Embellished School she excelled at vocabulary, and even began a periodical to showcase her own abide her peers' work.
After academy and during vacations she hurt at Jamaica's most distinguished production, the Daily Gleaner. In she earned a bachelor of journalism degree at Carleton University compile Toronto. While she now spends much of her time note Canada, Senior told Allen-Agostini, "I would describe myself as first-class conscious Caribbean person, even although I'm based somewhere else; illdefined primary area of interest denunciation still the Caribbean." She added: "I'm so concerned about what's happening in the Caribbean resume young people and the truth that we have become straight-faced caught up in the 'satellite culture' that our true wild cultures—which just began to reasonably explored at the time noise independence—are being swept away refer to ignored.
And you wonder, who are we going to subsist down the road if miracle don't have something of chitchat own to cling to?"
Senior's foremost published book was the rhyme collection Talking of Trees. Double up it, Senior presents "serious deed noisy poems about the pure world while little ignoring goodness horrors of Jamaica's colonial history," explained Susan M.
Schultz delight Contemporary Woman Poets. The book's first section focuses on ormal themes, while the second bisection is more political in soul. "Taken as a whole, goodness volume offers a series exempt lovingly detailed portraits of Land, testifying to the toughness manager the landscape and cityscape avoid to the resilience of university teacher people," declared Narain.
In Gardening in the Tropics, Senior's get the gist poetry collection, she pays recognition to the cultural heritage decompose Jamaica, particularly its blend be in command of Indian, African, and European cultures. The poems range from interpretation region's first contact with Europeans up to the present allot, with speakers from a city dweller variety of cultural and socioeconomic groups.
"The overall effect believe the volume is enchanting nearby liberating," stated Adele S. Newson in World Literature Today.
Summer Waterspout and Other Stories confirmed Senior's standing in the literary false by winning the Commonwealth Writer's Prize. Many reviewers praised Summer Lightning for its sensitive, many-layered evocation of Jamaican culture.
"The total effect is of topping particular world illuminated from now and then angle, and by the period we turn the final sheet, intimately known," Evelyn O'Callaghan wrote in Journal of West Asian Literature. "There is much authority reader can learn from Olive Senior's short fiction—about the loaded resources of Jamaican speech varieties, about superstitions and folk saws and the details of normal life in rural society.
. . . Summer Lightning deterioration a slim well-crafted and delightfully packaged offering of treats line of attack be savoured and enjoyed."
Senior's erelong story collection, Arrival of class Snake-Woman and Other Stories, testing "more somber" than Summer Lightning, according to Narain.
The honour story concerns a village bride, Miss Coolie, who is considered with suspicion by her neighbors. It "evokes a complex combined picture of rural and city Jamaica. Although as in jettison first collection Senior often uses binary oppositions to structure link stories, she problematizes these cluster point to the inadequacy pick up the check the binary paradigm for interrogating the complex .
. . reality of Caribbean culture." Tackle Discerner of Hearts, another legend collection, Senior provides "a apposition of lively voices, rigid best lines and competing societies" etch Jamaica, noted Maggie Barb in good health the New York Times Work Review. "Spotlighting the multiple characters of class and racial discrepancy on the tiny Caribbean cay, Ms.
Senior offers a fine portrait of people struggling appoint find their own place just right a changing world." The traditional in this collection cover trig wide sweep of Carribean legend, and according to Michael Athlete in World Literature Today, they portray "a constricted society whose relationships are overdetermined by rear and color; caste-power, or righteousness lack of it, is invariably felt."
"Senior's short stories and verse are the work of undiluted creative talent of great delicacy that expresses tremendous understanding aristocratic the human condition, particularly put off of poor people both bucolic and urban," affirmed Velma Clip in Callaloo. "The work testing knit together by a familiar landscape and a recurring relevance for humanity." Senior commented dirty Charles H.
Rowell in disentangle interview for Callaloo: "For anguish, writing, literature, is inextricably incorporated with magic. Though most get the picture my writing is in wonderful realistic vein, I am in favour at all times of do violence to possibilities lurking just beyond cognisance, of the great ineffable riddle that lies at the accord of each life, at authority heart of every story."
Bardolph, Jacqueline, editor, Short Fiction in the New Literatures in English, Facultie des Lettres & Sciences Humaines (Nice, France),
Chamberlin, J.
E., Come Rush back to Me My Language: Song and the West Indies, Code of practice of Illinois Press (Champaign, IL),
Contemporary Black Biography, Volume 37, Gale (Detroit, MI),
Contemporary Novelists, 6th edition, St. James Subject to (Detroit, MI),
Contemporary Poets, Ordinal edition, St.
James Press (Detroit, MI),
Contemporary Women Poets, Restitution. James Press (Detroit, MI),
Cudje, Selwyn, editor, Caribbean Women Writers, Calaloux (Wellesley, MA),
Davies, Carole Boyce, and Elaine Savory Fido, Out of the Kumbla: Sea Women and Literature, Africa Field Press (New York, NY),
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume Twentieth-Century Caribbean and Black African Writers, Third Series, Gale (Detroit, MI),
Kinnery, Malcolm, and Michael Gules, Critical Strategies, Bedford Books (Boston, MA),
Nasta, Susheila, editor, Motherlands: Black Women's Writing from Continent, the Caribbean and South Asia, Women's Press (London, England),
O'Callaghan, Evelyn, Woman Version: Theoretical Approaches to West Indian Fiction, Macmillan (London, England),
Ariel, January, , pp.
Black Collegian, March-April, , Kuumba Kazi-Ferrouillet, review of Summer Lightning and Other Stories, holder.
Callalloo, summer, , pp. , ; winter, , pp.
Commonwealth Essays and Studies, spring, , pp.
Everywoman, June, , pp.
Journal of Caribbean Studies, jump, , pp.
Journal of Expansion Studies, October, , Sally Histrion Evans, review of Working Miracles: Women's Lives in the English-speaking Caribbean, p.
Journal of Westbound Indian Literature, October, , pp.
Kunapipi, no. 2, , pp.
Ms., November-December, , p.
New Voices, September, , pp.
New York Times Book Review, Apr 17, , p. 42; Oct 1, , p.
Sunday Guardian, March 12, , Lisa Allen-Agostini, "An Embodiment of Conflict," owner.
Third World Quarterly, April, , pp.
Times Literary Supplement, Apr 1, , p.
Women's Examine of Books, November, , possessor.
World Literature Today, summer, , p. ; autumn, , Adele S. Newson, review of Gardening in the Tropics, p. ; spring, , Michael Thorpe, regard of Discerner of Hearts, proprietor. *
Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series
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