Carina Solis

Carina Solis is a sixteen-year-old writer in Georgia. The author of "Daughtersong" (Bottlecap Press, 2023), she has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, The National Poetry Quarterly, The Georgia High School Association, The New York Times, and others. Her work appears in Gone Lawn, Barren Magazine, Rust and Moth, and elsewhere. She will attend the University of Pennsylvania in the fall.

select poetry.
INKSOUNDS — "Where Tongue Ends" (forthcoming)
"Barren Magazine" — "My Father Carved A Hollow In My Mother's Throat And I Inherited Her Grief
"West Trestle Review — "Spellbound"
Rust and Moth — "American Dream"
Heavy Feather Review — "shattered"
Gone Lawn — "opal eyeballs stored in a bottle"
CLOVES Literary — "my grandfather's sweater"
Surging Tide Magazine — "growing pains"
Beaver Magazine — "grief fish" and "man"

honors.
Best of the Net Nomination for "grief fish" (2023)
— Beaver Magazine
GHSA State Personal Essay Competition (2023)
— Second Place
25th Annual National High School Poetry Contest (2022)
— Topical Winner
Surging Tide Magazine Annual Writing & Art Contest (2022)
— Poetry Finalist
New York Times Summer Reading Contest (2022)
— Honorable Mention
Scholastic Art & Writing Awards (2022)
— National Silver Medalist
Young Georgia Authors Competition (2022)
— Regional Winner
Georgia River of Words Contest (2022)
— State Winner
Carroll County Creative Writing Contest (2022)
— Grand Prize Winner

work.
Senior Editor — Polyphony Lit (2022 -)
General Editor — The Origami Review (2022 -)
Twitter Lead — Young Eager Writers (2022 - 2023)
Social Media Intern — Hey Young Writer (2023 -)mentorships.
— Ellipsis Advanced Poetry Workshop, The Nuts & Bolts of Poetry Under Michael Frazier (2022)
— Girls Write Now Mentorship, Writing 360 Program Under Robin Messing (2022 - 2023)
— The Daphne Review Online Program, Poetry Mentorship Under Nicholas Sweeney (2023)
— Kenyon Young Writers Winter Workshop, All Loss is Small Loss: The Contemporary American Elegy Under Matthew Kelsey (2023)
— The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Under Breezy Janae (2023)
— The Center for Africana Studies Summer Institute Under Dr. Keisha-Khan Y. Perry & Professor Dagmawi Woubshet (2023)features.
— Olney Magazine Poet of the Week (2023)
— Interview with Roi Faineant Press (2023)
— Reading with Fifth Wheel Press (2023)
— Interview with Wrongdoing Magazine (2023)
— Interview with Ottavia Paluch (2023)

Buy Daughtersong at Bottlecap PressThrough a series of eight poems, Carina Solis delves into sorrow and its place in the lives of girls wading the waters of a beautiful, coercive society. In "Daughtersong," the speakers silent-cry in showers, explore their youth, live through familial grief, and clutch at their voices: it is a narrative for those existing in silence.Praise for Daughtersong."In Carina Solis’ "Daughtersong," each poem is a place to inhabit—a house full of nostalgia, familiarity, and loss. Adorned with sharp imagery and a crystalized sense of self, Solis navigates through the interiority of womanhood through wordplay and the lineage of a body, where “Bwai becomes boy” and “Fatha becomes father [and] farther” and the “smudge of a girl” becomes another self to occupy. Yet, these intimacies reveal just how worldly "Daughtersong" is: a melody for all the girls navigating through their hollowed bodies."— Jessica Kim, author of "L(EYE)GHT" (Animal Heart Press)"In this collection, Carina Solis deconstructs performative femininity and the physical expectations of girlhood while singing a family narrative that is gentle, raw, and dreamlike. Each poem floats across the page, and each image places beauty and decay in shimmering harmony. Solis’ eight poems are delicate gifts to be reckoned with."– Dana Blatte, author of "Lone" (Emerge Literary Editions)“Daughtersong” is absolutely gripping. This is the kind of chapbook that urges you to feel–the kind that you can read again and again and still feel more deeply each time. With her deliciously vivid imagery and her beautifully visceral command of language, Carina Solis explores yearning and ache, identity and ancestry, grief and love in a raw and candid work of art. Solis’s writing is passion, emotion, and everything in between; it lures you in like a song, then consumes you whole. Every poem strikes you like a bullet; every poem burns and smolders with intensity, leaving smoke and hunger in its wake: “tell me, / why are you crying—you are supposed to be / on your knees”. A captivating and lusciously rich collection.– Kayleigh Sim, author of "moongazing, ephemerally" (Ethel Press) and "night driving" (Ghost City Press)"Carina Solis navigates the intersections of gender and youth in the twenty-first century with simultaneous candor and wit within her debut collection. With poems delineating the loss of innocence and the violence of patriarchy, Solis infuses an incandescent cognizance into each line, embedding the collection with a soft yet furious precision. It is this sense of fury—a fury ignored in contemporary contexts for so long—that establishes Solis as both a poet of veracity and of violence. "Daughtersong" is a collection that grows into its own unspoken yet deeply intimate grief."– Sharon Zhang, author of "mother bird" (Fifth Wheel Press)