Karen Solie

• Name — Karen Solie • Born — 1966 • Birthplace — Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada • Occupation — Poet, educator • Education — University of Lethbridge University of Victoria • Awards — T. S. Eliot Prize (2025) Governor General's Award for English-language poetry (2025) Latner Griffin Writers' Trust Poetry Prize (2015) Pat Lowther Award (2010)

Born in Moose Jaw in 1966, Solie grew up on the family farm in southwest Saskatchewan. She holds a bachelors from the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, and pursued graduate studies at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Over the years, she has worked as a farm hand, an espresso jerk, a groundskeeper, a newspaper reporter/photographer, an academic research assistant, and an English teacher.

Karen Solie's poetry, fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous North American journals, including Geist, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Event, Indiana Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Other Voices, and The Capilano Review. She has also had her poetry published in the anthologies Breathing Fire (1995), Hammer and Tongs (1999), Introductions: Poets Present Poets (2001), Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets (2005). One of her short stories was featured in The Journey Prize Anthology 12 (2000). Solie's poem "Prayers for the Sick" won second place in Arc Poetry Magazine ' s 2008 Poem of the Year Contest. Solie was one of the judges for the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize, judged the 2012 Walrus Poetry Prize, and was a judge for the Poetry in Voice Canadian high school poetry recitation competition. In 2014, she was named as a trustee to the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry. Her collection The Road in Is Not the Same Road Out was published in 2015. In 2015, she won the Latner Griffin Writers' Trust Poetry Prize. In 2021, she was the Jack McClelland Writer in Residence at the University of Toronto, and in 2022, was the Holloway Visiting Poet at the University of California at Berkeley. She is currently a lecturer in creative writing at the University of St Andrews. In 2023, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry.