Pretty Punks: Poems, Portrait & Play

Jessie McCarty is an Irish-American writer from Shreveport, Louisiana. Their poetry, in English and Gaeilge, uses images of the Louisiana South and Midwest as memory tools. Their poems can be read in Dublin’s Bog Bodies Press, Sarka Journal, The Minnesota Review, Charm School, The Documentarian, Don’t Submit Lit, Thick Press, and more.

Jessie’s writing has been published as research chapbooks for the following theatrical productions: The Sarcoma Cycle (11:11 Press, 2024), the Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions: A Homo-Turgy ode to Larry Mitchell (Jack Bowes, 2024), and Perforated Play (Dir. Miles Sennett, 2022). They have taught writing at Index Space, The Center for Fiction, and more. Previous collections include The Bovine Huff (Track and Field Studios, 2021) and the self-published artist book, Our Fairy Diary (2023). Their poem, “Loving you is ordinary heaven,” was featured in Only Poems Daily under Best New Poems in August 2025. They were nominated as Best New Poetry Book by a Chicagoan and Best New Poet for the Chicago Reader’s Best of Arts and Culture in 2022, for their work, The Bovine Huff.

Jessie McCarty has a BFA in Creative Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They hold certifications in systems migration and rare book cataloging (DCRMB).