Acclaimed poet & UVic alumna Karen Solie spoke to our students in October, just ahead of winning the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry in November for her latest collection, Wellwater. In this video, she reads from her work and engages in conversation with Writing professor Gregory Scofield.

Karen Solie was born in Moose Jaw and grew up in southwest Saskatchewan. She is the author of six collections of poetry since 2001: Short Haul Engine (Brick Books), Modern and Normal (Brick), Pigeon (Anansi), The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out (Anansi, FSG), The Caiplie Caves (Anansi, FSG, Picador) and Wellwater (Anansi, FSG, Picador). A volume of selected poems, The Living Option, was published in the UK by Bloodaxe Books. Pigeon was awarded the Pat Lowther Award, Trillium Poetry Prize and the Griffin Prize. The Caiplie Caves was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and Derek Walcott Prize. Wellwater is shortlisted for this year’s Forward Prize for Best Collection.

Solie is also a recipient of the Latner Poetry Prize, the Canada Council for the Arts Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship. She has served most recently as Jack McClelland Writer in Residence at Massey College (University of Toronto), the Holloway Visiting Poet (UC Berkeley), the inaugural International Writer in Residence (York University) and will be the Shaftesbury Creative Writer in Residence for Victoria College (University of Toronto) in 2026. She currently teaches creative writing half-time for the University of St Andrews in Scotland.