Karen Solie
Karen Solie was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in 1966 and grew up on the family farm in the southwest of the province. She has lived in Medicine Hat, Lethbridge, Austin, Texas, Victoria, Edmonton, and currently Toronto.
She has worked as a daily newspaper reporter/photographer, a groundskeeper, a barista in a mall food court and as a library assistant, played in alt country bands and taught English at the University of Victoria. Karen was on the poetry faculty for the 2005-2006 Banff Centre for the Arts Wired Writing Studio and served as Writer in Residence at the University of Alberta for 2004-2005. She has reviewed books for the Globe and Mail since 2001.
Her first book of poems, Short Haul Engine (Brick Books, 2001), won the BC Book Prize Dorothy Livesay Award, and was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Gerald Lampert Award, and the ReLit Prize. Her second, Modern and Normal (Brick Books, 2005), was shortlisted for the Trillium Poetry Prize. Her third collection, Pigeon (Anansi, 2009), won the Griffin Canadian Poetry Prize in 2010.