Olive Senior

The Jamaican writer, Olive Senior, has been writing and publishing since the 1980s. Her oeuvre includes poetry and short stories as well as journalism, and offers detailed and loving portraits of ‘ordinary’ Jamaicans whether they’re struggling to make a living of the land in harsh rural contexts or to negotiate the complex postcolonial realities of life in the city. Senior scrutinises the way power operates at global and local levels whilst presenting the bigger historical narratives which position (but don’t quite ‘fix’) the individuals that she writes about. In her attention to the detail and texture of literary language she has established a voice which is distinctly understated and wry, insinuating rather than declamatory which provides a nuanced, engaged and gendered alternative definition for ‘writing resistance’ than is usually associated with Caribbean writers.