Books, etc.

On a gradient background of pale blue,  pink, white, and mauve, a white unicorn reclines on a red fainting couch of the kind often found in mid-20th century psychotherapists' offices. Surrounding the unicorn, a mismatched collage of flowers and rainbows set the tone for a beautiful but unhinged romp.

Your Therapist Says It’s Magical Thinking

My second full-length poetry collection, a Very Weird One (TM) from ECW Press in Spring 2023.

Sadie McCarney’s Your Therapist Says It’s Magical Thinking is a buoyant second poetry collection that playfully navigates the turbulent waters of life with mental illness and neurodivergence.  McCarney digs deep into the muck of her own lived experience and resurfaces with, if not gold, at least a few treasured hunks of bone.



An X-Ray of a human hand reaches through an X-Ray of a  human face. At the top, pale mauve text reads "Head War" and "Sadie McCarney".

Head War

My first chapbook, now out of print because its 2021 publisher (Frog Hollow Press) shut down.

In found poems culled from the poet’s psychiatric records, Sadie McCarney lays bare the experiences of an “impatient inpatient” with humour, grace, and grit. This manuscript also became a one-woman show, winning the Oscar Wilde Award for works celebrating nonconformity at the 2021 Island Fringe Festival.



In bright purple, a winged skull similar to headstone iconography seems to float above the title "Live Ones" in a serif font. The background is cream-coloured.

Live Ones

My first poetry collection, from the University of Regina Press (2019) and then later from tall-lighthouse, uk (2020).

Sadie McCarney’s first full-length poetry collection grapples with mourning, coming of age, and queer identity against the backdrop of rural and small-town Atlantic Canada. Ranging from pellet-gunned backyard butterflies to a chorus of encroaching ghosts, Live Ones celebrates the personal and idiosyncratic aspects of death, seeing them as intimately wedded to lives well-lived. Personal myth-making collides with grocery shopping, ancient history turns out to be alive and well in modern-day Milford, Nova Scotia, and the complexities of queer female desire call out to us from beyond the grave.

Longlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award

Shortlisted for the PEI Book Award in Poetry