Born in 1947 in Kingston Jamaica, Lorna Goodison is poet and leading Caribbean writer of her generation. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2017, succeeding Mervyn Morris, becoming the first woman to hold the position.

Lorna Goodison is both a painter & poet. She has exhibited her paintings internationally and her art work can often been seen on the covers of her books.

Lorna Goodison was educated at the Jamaica School of Art and the School of the Art Students League in New York. Her numerous poetry collections include Tamarind Season (1980), Heartease (1988), Traveling Mercies (2001), Controlling the Silver (2005), Goldengrove: New and Selected Poems (2006) and Supplying Salt and Light (2013). She is also the author of the short story collections Baby Mother and the King of Swords (1990), Fool-fool Rose is Leaving Labour-in-Vain Savannah (2005) and By Love Possessed (2011), as well as the memoir From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People (2007), which won the BC (British Columbia) National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and was a finalist for both the Trillium Book Award and the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.

She currently divides her time between Jamaica and Ann-Arbor, Michigan in the United States where she teaches at the University of Michigan.