Eva Senécal (née Marie-Eva) was born in La Patrie, Quebec, on 20 April 1905, to Adélard Senécal, a farmer, and Octavie Beaudry Senécal. A poet and novelist of the 1920s and 1930s, Senécal has long been classified by literary historians as part of a "feminine school" of that period, along with her contemporaries Jovette-Alice Bernier, Simone Routier, and Medjé Vézina. The works of these women share a personal lyricism and a focus on the exaltation and anguish of love, a theme that contrasts sharply with the nationalistic topics favored in Quebec at the time.

Educated at the école normale of Saint-Hyacinthe, Senécal was a correspondent for the Sherbrooke Tribune from 1920 to 1930. In 1923 she was forced to spend several months at a sanatorium on Lac-Edouard and began writing her first poems. She published...