Pretty Punks

Pub. Magra Books.
ISBN: 979-8-9926955-0-2

Date: December 1, 2025

Three corpora in one, Pretty Punks forges a complex and intertwined aesthetics drawn from the American South, Irish/ Irish-American folk traditions, and the complexities of gender. "Poems" takes Yeats as a starting point and diverges with great urgency. "Portrait" offers a compelling told-tale about Louisiana bull riding and loss. "Play" features players contemplating the existential punishment of both facing and being death.

honeyed by a drunken baroque lilt teeming beneath expertly whittled minimalism. Inviting and illustrative, McCarty’s stylistic breadth is impressive yet consistent from line drawing to fable. This book is as much of a love-talker as the legendary trickster gean cánach, in that not many people write like this anymore. Let Pretty Punks seduce you, the words might just ring true. 

L Scully, author of Self-Romancing

"Pretty Punks is suffused with meditations on love and loss, hope and disappointment, transient spaces of travel and the comfort of home. In this striking debut, McCarty writes folktales for our time. Each word is a surprise and a revelation that feels incredibly rooted in honesty and reality, all while transcending the boundaries of what we know."

Mána Taylor, writer and art-critic