https://www.calrbs.org/program/calrbs-professional-certificates/

California Rare Book School

Cataloger

An Ecology For Looking At Your Video Archival Practice

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

Shreveport Made Me

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

Our Fairy Diary

In this collaborative collection, Sarah Haines and Jessie McCarty react, ruminate, and mutate between port cities: Chicago and Shreveport. Written as a response to growing up within Northwest Louisiana, Our Fairy Diary poses as a letter, a postcard, and a query into fairy rings.

The Bovine Huff

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.

Silencio Theater performs the Seductions of Fear in The Dog, the Night and the Knife

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

Merit Scholar

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

Best new Poetry Book

3rd Place in the 2022 Chicago Reader Best of Arts and Culture.

Best New Poet in Chicago

3rd Place in the 2022 Chicago Reader Best Of List

Best Art Film

2022 Italy International Scholar, Emilia-Romagna.
2022 New York scholar, Librarianship in Praxis (with Emily Drabinski, CUNY). 
2023 San Francisco Scholar, Rare Book Cataloging (with Ann K.D. Myers, University of Berkeley).

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

Performance and video installation titled 'My Progress is None of Your Business" collaged with diaries, research notes, and yoga meditations in response to cognitive behavioral therapy. Performers from the Runaways Lab Theater were to conduct a yoga ritual, led by Elliot Schiff, in front of a video by Jessie McCarty. Performers include Dylan Fahoome, Niky Crawford, Ryne Nardecchia, and Jessie McCarty. Part of an opening ceremony for the book release of Carter St. Hogan (11:11 Press).

My Progress is None of Your Business

Arts and Culture Best of Chicago: in Poetry and Poetry Publishing

Best of Chicago 2022 Arts and Culture Winners

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.

“I’m Really Stuck Here with You?” An Interview with HATE/LAB on “Perforated Play” at the Facility Theatre

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

We Want Love?: A Review of The Runaways Lab Theater’s Affection as a Space Vacuum

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.

Founder, Programmer

The Runaways Lab cross-pollinates with many mediums.  The Runaways Lab is nomadic. The Runaways Lab aims to be geographically & financially accessible. Poetry, science, mystery, & magick. Noir light. Primo weirdo theater. Squalid maximalist art. Fame & glamour. The Runaways Lab Theater is a multi-media theater company. The Runaways Lab is based in Chicago.

Artistic Director

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.

An Index is a Diary: Sorting through your Personal Lists

This course will consider how lists, order, and memory function in poetry. We’ll seek to inquire, interrogate, and build an understanding of writing the “catalog poem.”

A List Is a Letter: Techniques for Creating the Catalog Poem with Jessie McCarty

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.

Pop is Becoming

Assisting David Nelson, the Director of avant-garde cinema house Minicine, in cataloging and digitizing his collection of screenings spanning 20 years.

Archive Assistant

Chicago auction house specializing in the sale of collectibles and antiques of all types, including paper Americana, vintage advertising, rare books, coin-op, playing cards, gambling memorabilia, vintage posters, prints and magicana - antiques and collectibles focused on magic and magicians. The role of cataloger inventories, researches, and appraises items up for auction with the collaboration of the collector.

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.

Media Manager

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."

Bookseller

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.

Submissions Reviewer

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.