The Bright Afters (ECW Press, 2026)
When a gay teenager is stabbed in a high school bathroom, all of West Nowhere, Nova Scotia speaks up in a chorus of dissonant voices – to rage, but also to reflect. The Bright Afters is a verse novel about collective and individual trauma, queer belonging, and the ways in which a place sculpts the people it produces.
“Sadie McCarney’s The Bright Afters is a living, interactive text, one which we do not so much read as enter. A remarkable achievement.”
–Anne M. Smith-Nochasak, The Seaboard Review of Books
The Chaise Lounge (chapbook; 845 Press, 2025)
In an IKEA harder to navigate than an actual maze, a queer elder searches for her long-lost wife amid store displays that force her to recall memories of their life together. A chapbook about dementia and the stories we tell ourselves to cope with loss.
Your Therapist Says It’s Magical Thinking (ECW Press, 2023)
Your Therapist Says It’s Magical Thinking playfully navigates the perspectives of neurodivergent and mentally ill speakers, in sections ranging from the personal (the author’s lifetime of being given unhelpful mental health “advice”) to the fantastical (a rainbow carpool unicorn). A poetry collection about having a weird and occasionally wondrous brain.
“Fun and thoughtfulness run hand in hand here…McCarney’s imagination is certainly on full display.”
–Emily Stewart, Canthius
Head War (chapbook; Frog Hollow Press, 2021)
Head War is a found poetry performance text culled from the records of Sadie McCarney’s two-month psychiatric inpatient stay in 2013. Through this text, we uncover the brilliance of Mad life through the cold, clinical language meant only to describe it to outsiders.
Live Ones (University of Regina Press, 2019/ tall-lighthouse uk, 2020)
Live Ones is a debut poetry collection that explores mourning, coming of age, and queer identity against the backdrop of rural and small-town Atlantic Canada. Like a tomboy with a pocket full of rhinestones, lovingly placing them on the graves of the dead.
“…un-romanticized tenderness toward individuals on the knife blade between childhood and adulthood…there is no shortage of images in this book that stun with their originality. ”
–Lynn McGee, Lambda Literary
“Making language so wonderfully crack and crackle as she does, McCarney’s sense of sound is nothing short of carbonated! Poetic effervescence.” — Sylvia Legris on “Home Bus”, a poem included in Live Ones