The Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS) is launching York’s first writer-in-residence program in January with award-winning Canadian poet, Karen Solie.
“I am delighted to welcome Karen Solie to LA&PS,” said LA&PS Dean J.J. McMurtry. “Our students and Faculty will benefit greatly from her guidance, creativity and innovation. She will complement the wonderful work already taking place in our creative writing program.”
Solie is the author of five collections of poetry. Her third, Pigeon (2009), won the Griffin Poetry Prize, Trillium Poetry Prize and the Pat Lowther Award. A volume of selected and new poems, The Living Option (2013), was published in the U.K. and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out (2015) was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award, and her most recent collection, The Caiplie Caves (2019), was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and Derek Walcott Prize.
The new writer-in-residence program will connect students with professional writers who can provide invaluable feedback, critiques and support. In addition to meeting with students and providing consultations on their work, Solie will be available for classroom visits and will also be hosting a series of events that includes a public reading, writing workshops and talks beginning in the new year.
For inquires about the program, direct emails to Pasha Malla, associate professor in the Department of English.