Karen Solie's Pigeon (House of Anansi Press, 2009) received the $65,000 Griffin Poetry Prize in 2010 for Canadian poetry.

Karen Solie was born in Moose Jaw in 1966 and grew up on the family farm in southwest Saskatchewan. She has worked as a farm hand, an espresso jerk, a groundskeeper, a newspaper reporter/photographer, an academic research assistant, and an English teacher. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in numerous North American journals, including The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Event, Indiana Review, ARC, Other Voices, and The Capilano Review. She has also had her poetry published in the anthologies Breathing Fire (Harbour, 1995), Hammer and Tongs (Smoking Lung, 1999) and Introductions: Poets Present Poets (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2001) where her work was presented by Brick Books' editor Don McKay: "Karen Solie's work reminds me that there is at the heart of metaphor a delicious amoral joy." One of her short stories was featured in The Journey Prize Anthology 12. Smoking Lung Press published her chapbook Eating Dirt. Solie resided in Victoria, British Columbia, as of 1993, then moved to Toronto prior to a stint at the University of Alberta as a writer in residence starting in September of 2004. She returned to live in Toronto, then moved to New Brunswick in 2006, with her partner David Seymour, to be writer in residence at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton for the 2006-2007 academic year.

AWARDS:

Winner, 2002 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize; Nominee, 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize, 2002 Gerald Lampert Award, 2002 Relit Award
Winner, 2010 Griffin Poetry Prize for Canadian Poetry

BOOKS:

Short Haul Engine (Brick Books, 2001)
Modern and Normal (Brick Books, 2005)
Pigeon (House of Anansi Press, 2009)

[BCBW 2010] "Poetry"