Karen Holmes Paul

Author and Poet

Karen Paul Holmes is a Poet and Freelance Writer. Karen grew up in Flint, where her father, Carl Paul, was the original owner of Angelo's Coney Island with Angelo Nikoloff. She waitressed there in summers as a teenager.

Karen is a published author of two works of poetry, "No Such Thing as Distance" (Terrapin, 2018), which contains poems about growing up in Michigan and her parents' emigration to Flint from Macedonia and Australia. Poems from that book have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac and by former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith on The Slowdown podcast.
Her first book, "Untying the Knot" (Aldrich, 2014), chronicles the grief and healing from divorce.
She has been published in over 100 journals and anthologies and was named the best
emerging poet by Stay Thirsty Media.

Holmes has a master's degree in music from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and now lives in Atlanta with her husband. In her former Corporate America life, she was Vice President-
Communications for a global financial company. She is an alumna of Bentley High School in
Burton, Michigan (formerly Flint), where she played French horn in the band, was a cheerleader
and was inspired by her English teachers to love writing.

Book Reviews: No Such Thing as Distance

"With grace, beauty, and humor, Holmes explores how the past remains the present through
music, art, pop culture (Barbie and the Beatles), as well as her rich cultural inheritance."
- Poet Denise Duhamel

"Like a circus aerialist who makes us gasp one moment and laugh the next, the poet takes us
from her immigrant father's Macedonian roots to her maturity, to the life of a woman who is
smart and well-read yet knows her way around a Coney Island hot dog and finds the attentions of a drunk cowboy oddly flattering."
- Poet David Kirby

"It's rare to find a poet who can make you feel you've known her your whole life because she
embodies the wit of your best friend, the sadness of your other best friend, and the sweetness of your oldest friend… I'll take this book on vacation with me. It's that entertaining and moving; it
wants to read twice.
- Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books
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To purchase Karen's books, available in Kindle and paperback at Amazon Books