The Bright Afters

by Sadie McCarney

When a gay teenager is mercilessly stabbed in a high school bathroom in West Nowhere, Nova Scotia, the surrounding community is sent into a tailspin. While Colton fights for his life in a hospital room at West Nowhere General, everyone from a school janitor to the boy’s abusive stepfather overflows with emotion in the form of verse monologues, unburdening themselves of their feelings.


The Bright Afters is a poetic container for the pain endured by the town and surrounding area — and sometimes, their confessions. The voices we hear from include the sympathetic (a favorite teacher) and the arresting (the kid who stabbed Colton). As Colton recovers, his powder keg sister Christine and his escapist best friend, Annie, have the most to lose from the act that almost killed him — and the most to gain from coming to a new understanding about the senseless violence.


Told from a variety of perspectives, The Bright Afters seeks to interrogate collective and individual trauma, queer belonging, and the ways in which a place sculpts the people it produces. Its individual poems take their names from Broadway shows, containing all of the community’s fraught hope for a positive “big finish” to the story.

80 pages, Paperback

Published May 19, 2026

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free ARC from ECW press in exchange for a review.

I requested this book because I enjoyed McCarney's previous poetry collections, and this one was no different even though the poems now circle a narrative (I'm avoiding "single narrative" because, while there is a plot, it's not singular in the way that McCarney follows multiple characters with their own narratives). Her style and structure keep refining, and, like all good poetry, she says so much in a few broad strokes of words. McCarney also plays with structure as the story progresses, and it's fun to experience the creativity of many of the poems.

In The Bright Afters, McCarney begins by immersing readers in the teenagers' end-of-summer parties in the backward town of Nowhere, Nova Scotia. The descriptions of the first poem are lush, even while the structure is carefully minimalist. The next poems then introduce readers to the main characters, three friends - Colton, his sister Christine, and his best friend Annie - each of whom is struggling within the suffocating boundaries of their small town and its idea(l)s, especially regarding gender expectations. Then, everything goes wrong and the narrative splinters into wider perspectives - it feels like a chorus from various members of the town, the teenagers' families, and even the perpetrator of a violent attack against Colton. The poems spin through and around the experiences of those involved, with a flashback to their childhood, before returning to the present and giving the characters space to move on with their lives.

The danger of writing a verse narrative is that, because of the fragmentary structure, parts of the plot don't align in an entirely satisfying way. There are parts of the story that felt to be missing, but, at the same time, not everything makes sense in real life, not every action has a proper reason behind it.

Overall, this is an excellent poetry collection with a compelling story. I'm planning on buying the book once it's released!

[Carolina Familia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems that tell a story of a gay teen, who is violently stabbed during a high school dance. The poems are told from the POV of various characters in the town of West Nowhere, Nova Scotia, like the teens Dad, sister, old friend(and attacker), even the janitor. They describe their feelings of the town and process the attack of the teen. I really enjoyed the first few poems, they are well written and give a good sense of what it feels like growing up in this town that doesn’t progress. I was hesitant in reading this story as I thought the prose would prevent me from enjoying the story, but glad I gave it a shot.

Thanks to ECW press for an advanced copy of this book.