Olga Orman
Olga Orman (9 November 1943 – 7 March 2021) was a Dutch-Aruban writer, poet and storyteller who wrote in Papiamento and Dutch. She introduced kamishibai, a small-picture storytelling method from Japan, to the Netherlands and to the ABC islands. Orman was born in Noord, Aruba, and moved to the Netherlands when she was 14. She earned a teaching degree in Etten-Leur and worked as an elementary school teacher in Curaçao for five years. Later she taught in Amsterdam’s Bijlmermeer neighborhood from the 1970s.
In 1994 she published her first children's book, E biaha largo pa djeipei / De lange reis van hier tot om de hoek. She is known for two picture books about the spider Anansi. She began writing poetry in the 1980s and is best known for her 2014 poetry collection Cas di biento / Doorwaaiwoning.
As a teacher she saw how hard it could be for children to express themselves in a new language, so she kept the oral storytelling tradition alive and brought kamishibai into classrooms. She also wanted to bring Kinderboekenweek, the Netherlands’ annual children’s book week, to the ABC islands. In 2001 she was one of the founding members of Simia Literario, a group promoting ABC island literature. She was knighted in the Order of Orange-Nassau in 2004.
Olga Orman died in Amsterdam on 7 March 2021 at the age of 77.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 14:21 (CET).