I Read Stuff Bookstore is a micro/bookshop in Cafe Mustache in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago. We specialize in consignments, folklore, weird fiction, queer theory, eco-literature, cinema, and more! I Read Stuff is made up of Jessie McCarty (Founder), Chloe Harrington (Creative Director), and Candela Navarro Molina (Books in Translation). Logo design by tattoo artist Alissa Lasch.

Reflect on your collections and establish a creative archiving practice in this two-day workshop. Part group critique, part writing workshop, part reflective residency, this workshop invites you to develop a creative archiving practice for your artist practice, diary entries, collection of writings, and more.

Chosen to represent the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's undergraduate writing department for my lecture, Pop is Becoming. I compare modern pop music to prose poetries, referencing Kathleen Rooney, Elisa Gabbert, The 1975, and Carly Rae Jepsen.

Three poems in response to cataloging video archives for The Documentarian. Photographs by Telo Hoy.

Jessie McCarty ruminates on returning back to Shreveport, Louisiana after five years away.

The Bovine Huff is a collection of memoir, footnotes, and mythology. I explore various modes of collecting and research. I take inspiration from Gleaners and I (Varda, 2000), The Shreveport, Louisiana Yellow Fever mound and Irish mythology. I am asking, what does a body do? What does it mean to remember

This is a brief inquiry to myth, collecting, waste. Inspired by Agnes Varda’s Gleaners and I, I take the idea of picking up ideas and setting them back down. Initially meant to investigate Celtic women in lore, The Bovine Huff is also images, archives and footnotes to the Táin Bó Cúailnge (Cattle Raid of Cooley), Ireland’s ancient epic. It is separated into two parts: On Cows (Myth), and On Varda. Cows (Myth) seeks to explore cows in mythological contexts, while gently tending to the idea of Irish folklore. On Varda is a direct response to her documentary “Gleaners and I,” my self-reflection in the modes of footnotes.

I reviewed the play, The Dog, the Night, The Knife, by Silencio Theater.

3rd Place in the 2022 Chicago Reader Best Of List

'Love in July'.

Merit scholar for the BFA in Creative Writing in the undergraduate division.

Summer 2022 article featuring my dramaturgy and research work for the play, Perforated Play, with HATE Lab and The Runaways Lab Theater at Facility Theater.

Review of my play, Affection as a Space Vacuum, by Danielle Levsky. Premiering at Rhino Festival, with Prop Thtr and The Runaways Lab.

TDR derives its name from the archaic word ‘dillydoun,’ meaning “a little lullaby.” Lullabies have been used for centuries to strengthen cultural roles, pass down knowledge, and lure children to sleep with dulcet tones. As submission editor, I was responsible for written feedback, editorial notes, and managing submissions through Submittable and Google Sheets.

Full-time bookseller responsible for inventory, social media posts, and book clubs.

As Social Media Assistant at City Lit Books, I collaborated with local authors and the bookstore owner to design, schedule, and upload events and new inventory announcements onto our Instagram, email (Mailchimp) and Facebook.

Sweet Void Cinema is a micro-theater and media production company in Humboldt Park, Chicago. I worked with the digital asset management Synology NAS to tag, load, and preserve the company's internal filing systems and video data.

The artist’s archive has paper ephemera, video, sound, film, and photographs documenting a long career interfacing with contemporary art and music scenes in the US and Europe. Using it as a teaching tool, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Historic Preservation will assist with database building, scanning, and preparing media. A retrospective book is in preparation for publishing in 2024. I led the catalog for Suite for Bass and Ironing Board, a 1980s video performance by Binion, to be digitized from U-matics with the Video Data Bank.

Bookseller responsible for maintaining stock, sales, and store upkeep. "Myopic Books is a tri-level used-books store stocking 80,000 tomes & hosting periodic concerts & poetry nights."

2017 Merit Scholar
2019 Scholar Program Recipient, The Burren Ireland Study Award