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Olive Senior is a prize-winning poet, author and independent scholar with over 20 published books. Her work spans multiple genres, including poetry, fiction, non-fiction and children’s literature. 

She lives in Canada and Jamaica and is widely travelled, her work and numerous honours and awards reflect her global citizenship. In 2025 these include the award of Jamaica’s Order of Distinction, a National honour, for her outstanding contribution to the literary arts. In 2024 she was named a Royal Society of Literature International Writer. Other awards include Canada’s Writers Trust Matt Cohen Award for Lifetime Achievement, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, honorary doctorates from the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica and York University, Canada,and the Gold Medal of the Institute of Jamaica.

Her latest work is the historical novel Paradise Once,seen through the eyes of the indigenous people of the Caribbean, theTaino.Also published in 2025 is her anthology of poems by Jamaican poets and photographs of treestitledTree Seen, a reflection of her commitment to environmental awareness asPoet Laureate ofJamaica 2021-2024.Other recent books include Hurricane Watch: New and Collected Poems and Pandemic Poems: First Wave.

Senior’s work has found worldwide resonance in numerous critical essays and translations and is taught in educational institutions at various levels. Most recently, Summer Lightning (her first book and winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize) was named one of the 70 outstanding books from the Commonwealth chosen to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee. Her popularity as one of the Caribbean’s foremost writers was cemented when four of her books were included in the first compilation in 2021 of “The 100 Caribbean Books that Made Us” organized by the Bocas Literary Festival.

She has been a writing mentor for many years,and has taught at various institutions, including the Humber School for Writers and Diaspora Dialogues in Canada. 

Paradise Once

A historical novel that brings to life the resiliency of the indigenous Taíno people in the Caribbean whose culture was virtually destroyed within two generations of their “discovery” by Christopher Columbus in 1492.

PARADISE ONCE traces the aftermath of the massacre by Spanish forces of the fictional Maima village in Cuba in 1513. Some believe the destruction of Maima is the result of angering the cemíes—Taíno spiritual entities—when foreign practices, contrary to the sacred laws of the Taíno, began to infiltrate the village. Four young people who survive the massacre are unwittingly chosen by the cemíes to save a Sacred Bundle and return it to a cave in the Cauta mountain, the mythological place the Taíno are believed to have come from: Sekou, an enslaved African born in Spain who has aligned himself with the Taíno resistance; Night Orchid, a young girl and the reluctant bearer of the Sacred Bundle; the young Taíno noble Heart of Palm; and finally Flint, whose mother is part of the “Old Ones,” a remnant group of people on the islands displaced by the Taíno.

The four survivors start off on separate paths and only learn of their roles in the sacred mission when they unite at the holy site and encounter the Maima shaman Candlewood. Under the direction of the cemíes, Candlewood guides them into the cave, where the “dark” shaman Shark Tooth—who has sold his soul to the underworld powers—awaits. As they progress on their journey, Candlewood informs them of the leadership roles they are destined to play in the preservation of the Taíno culture. In time, they will together defend the heartland as resistance fighters who will become known in history as Cimarrones or Maroons. But first they must defeat Shark Tooth in a life-or-death battle for the possession of the Bundle in the sacred ball court at Cauta, the fate of the entire Taíno people in their hands.

Senior’s exquisitely crafted historical fiction authentically evokes the spiritual heart of the Taíno people in this love song to the Caribbean.