Olive Senior is the author of 18 books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and children's literature. She is a winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and her collection Over the Roofs of the World was shortlisted for the 2005 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry. In 2019 Senior delivered the prestigious Margaret Laurence Lecture. Her latest book is the children's picture book Boonoonoonous Hair, which was illustrated by Laura James.

A Jamaican by birth, Senior now lives in Toronto but returns frequently to the Caribbean which remains central to her work.