Few details existed about Oliver’s early life, save for an admission in a 2007 interview that she began writing at a very young age. Music became a primary motivator until she began pursuing a masters’ degree at Florida State University at Tallahassee in 1976. Prior to this, she had earned a bachelors’ degree in English from Amherst College. There, she fell in love with acting, and along with fellow theater student Alan Ball, formed the General Nonsense Company, a satirical troupe that performed comic sketches. After earning her master’s degree, Oliver remained in Florida, where she penned several plays, while at the same time, supporting herself through office work and writing for a 1997 video game called “Riana Rouge.”

When the company that produced the game relocated to the West Coast, Oliver looked up Ball and landed a job as a script reader. She also reportedly worked in some capacity for an adult web site, which helped to serve as the genesis for “Lars and the Real Girl.” In 2002, Ball stopped Oliver from returning to Florida with an offer to join the writing staff of “Six Feet Under.” Over the next three years, Oliver quickly moved up the chain of command at the series; in addition to penning five episodes (including the fan favorite “Ecotone”), she served as story editor in 2004, and eventually became a co-producer in 2005. Following the final “Six Feet Under” episode in 2005, Oliver worked as supervising producer on the short-lived NBC series “Windfall.”

After assuming the staff position at “Six Feet Under,” Oliver’s agent began shopping around the “Lars” script. Though she viewed it as a modern fable, the subject matter kept it from finding a home for several years. However, the quality of the writing and the originality of its concept placed it at Number Three on the 2005 edition of The Black List, the notorious compilation of the best-regarded unproduced scripts in Hollywood.

That changed when Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and director Craig Gillespie tackled the project in 2007. Early response at several festival screenings was uniformly positive – the film had received a standing ovation during its premiere at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival – and critical response after its release in October of 2007 was largely effusive. Along with Ryan Gosling’s performance as the blissfully deluded Lars, Oliver’s script was singled out for much of the praise. As the year wound to a close, Oliver began racking up nominations from various associations, including the Writers Guild and the Broadcast Film Critics Association, as well as winning the Best Original Screenplay Award from the National Board of Review. In 2008, Oliver’s “Real Girl” script was honored with an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Despite the flurry of accolades, Oliver was already busy with another project – a second collaboration with Ball; this time on a new HBO series called “True Blood” (2007- ) about vampires and other supernatural phenomena in modern-day New Orleans.