Sadie McCarney (she/they) is a queer and neurodivergent university dropout with an incurable writing problem. (She’s probably making a list right now.) She is the author of three poetry books: the verse novel The Bright Afters (ECW Press, 2026), Your Therapist Says It’s Magical Thinking (ECW Press, 2023; selected for the 2024 PEI Book Award in Poetry and shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award), and Live Ones (University of Regina Press, 2019/ tall-lighthouse uk, 2020). Sadie’s most recent chapbook is The Chaise Lounge (845 Press, 2025). She also created the found poetry performance text/ mental health memoir Head War, which came out as a Frog Hollow Press chapbook in 2021 and grew into a one-person show and a short film from there.
Sadie won the Grain Short Grain Poetry Contest in 2023 and the Room Non-Fiction Contest in 2025. Their poetry and prose have additionally appeared in other publications, including yolk, EVENT, Contemporary Verse 2, PRISM International, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, GEIST, Lunch Ticket, Foglifter, The Walrus, and Best Canadian Poetry (2015, 2017’s “Best of the Best”, 2020, and 2024).
A grateful recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, PEI Arts Grants, and the Writers’ Trust of Canada (as well as two Pushcart Prize nominations), Sadie lives on Prince Edward Island with her exceedingly patient family and two sweet kitties.