Ghost County by John McCarthy
We launched a new poetry collection!
MG Press only puts out one or two books a year. So when one does get published, it feels extra special because we’re super-selective about the manuscripts we move forward with, and because we put so much energy into each title.
Ghost County by John McCarthy is his debut, but you wouldn’t know if you read it or see him read live. His energy floods the pages and saturates the air when he breathes a meditation on traversing the midwest in a pickup truck to life.
Here’s some of the early press it’s been getting:
“In John McCarthy’s arresting debut, the middle of America reveals itself to be a belly full of opportunities and frustrations.” —Adrian Matejka, author of The Big Smoke
“Ghost County…is a book that never stops opening up.”
–Adam Clay, author of Stranger and Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World
“[I]n these gritty poems, McCarthy exposes a grimmer reality tainted by drugs, alcohol, poverty, and violence. [T]his is a hardscrabble life where time stretches past into future, back into the past, and all seems predetermined to remain the same. McCarthy’s poems pay close attention to a darker middle life, and they do not flinch.”
—Sandy Longhorn, author of The Alchemy of My Mortal Form