Karen Solie

Karen Solie
Born1966 (age 59–60)
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada
OccupationPoet, educator
NationalityCanadian
Alma materUniversity of Lethbridge
University of Victoria
Notable awardsT. S. Eliot Prize (2025)
Governor General's Award for English-language poetry (2025)
Latner Griffin Writers' Trust Poetry Prize (2015)
Pat Lowther Award (2010)

Karen Solie (born 1966) is a Canadian poet based in Toronto, Ontario and St Andrews, Scotland where she teaches at the University of St Andrews.[1] Her sixth poetry collection, Wellwater, won the 2025 T. S. Eliot Prize,[1], the 2025 Forward Prize for Best Collection,[2] the 2025 Governor General's Award for English-language poetry,[3] and was shortlisted the PEN Heaney Prize.[4]

Early life

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.[5] 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.

Career

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), and Introductions: Poets Present Poets (2001). 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.[6] In 2015, she won the Latner Griffin Writers' Trust Poetry Prize.[7]

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.[8]

Awards

Bibliography

  • Short Haul Engine (2001)
  • Modern and Normal (2005)
  • Pigeon (2009)
  • The Living Option (2013)
  • The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out (2015)
  • The Caiplie Caves (2019)[9]
  • A Sharing Economy, Granta #141: Special Canada, 2017, pp 114 – 115
  • Wellwater (2025)

References

  1. ^ a b Creamer, Ella (21 January 2026). "'There is a sense of things careening towards a head': TS Eliot prize winner Karen Solie". The Guardian.
  2. ^ Loffhagen, Emma (2025-10-26). "Forward prize names poets Vidyan Ravinthiran and Karen Solie its first joint winners". The Guardian. Retrieved 2025-10-27.
  3. ^ Nicole Thompson, "Kyle Edwards wins Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction". Toronto Star, November 6, 2025.
  4. ^ Spanoudi, Melina (2025-10-23). "Six titles shortlisted for PEN Heaney Prize 2025". The Bookseller. Retrieved 2025-10-29.
  5. ^ "Karen Solie". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 21 January 2026.
  6. ^ "The 50 most anticipated books of 2015 (the first half, anyway)". The Globe and Mail, January 2, 2015.
  7. ^ "André Alexis wins Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize". The Globe and Mail, November 3, 2015.
  8. ^ "Guggenheim Fellowships: Karen Solie". www.gf.org.
  9. ^ "20 works of Canadian poetry to check out in spring 2019". CBC Books, January 25, 2019.
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