Cassidy McFadzean

Media description: A headshot of a photo with a person with long hair over one shoulder looking into the camera. Text reads: McCormack Writing Center, 2026 Spring Resident, Cassidy McFadzean

Media description: An headshot of a person standing in front of a wall mural and smiling into the camera. Text reads: McCormack Writing Center, 2026 Spring Resident, Jason Baum

We're so excited to announce two of our amazing 2026 Spring Residents — Cassidy McFadzean and Jason Baum!

We're honored to be able to support these writers and hope you will, too.

Learn more about our residents here: mccormackwritingcenter.org/mccormack-wr...

Book cover with a skipping stone mid-splash

Hi everyone,

My third collection, Empties, is out in March! "Empties" as a verb, "empties" as a plural noun. And how empty bottles can sing. 💛

I'll share details about upcoming launches soon.

Here's the cover (design by David Drummond)

Book cover for poetry chapbook Tulip is an Axe by Gary Barwin (Above/Ground): https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2025/12/new-from-aboveground-press-tulip-is-axe.html

Book cover for Crying Dress: Poems by Cassidy McFadzean (House of Anansi): The poems in Crying Dress, acclaimed poet Cassidy McFadzean’s third collection, explore the multiplicity of meaning that arises from fragmentation, rhythm, competing sounds, and ellipsis. Rooted in the tradition of lyric poetry, these strikingly original poems revel in musicality (rhyme, beat, and alliteration) while deploying puns, idiom, and other forms of linguistic play to create a dissonance that challenges the expected coherence of a poem. From the ghosts and gardens of Brooklyn and Sicily to the clanging of garbage chutes in Uno Prii’s modernist high rises in Toronto, to quiet moments of intimacy in domestic spaces, and the early days of sobriety and grief, Crying Dress explores the intersections between noise and coherence, the conversational and the associative, the architectural and the ecological, while reaffirming the poet’s sonic, vertiginous lyricism and gift for overlooked detail. https://houseofanansi.com/products/crying-dress

Book cover for Skin by Catherine Bush (Goose Lane): Now, for the first time, a blistering book of short fiction from one of Canada’s most loved novelists. In Skin, Catherine Bush plunges into the vortex of all that shapes us. Summoning relationships between the human and more-than-human, she explores a world where touch and intimacy are both desirable and fraught. https://gooselane.com/products/skin

Book cover for Nightjar by Natalie Rice (Gaspereau Press): The poems in Nightjar form a triptych vision of the way humans both experience and alter the natural world as we pass through it. Straddling between subalpine vistas and the brooks and bowers of the Acadian forest, Rice engages binaries of landscape and human history, loss and gain, the seen and unseen, and direction and distance, her movement between the sublime and the intimate stirring unexpected forces that pull us toward “the empty space where the mountain has fallen.” https://gaspereaupress.com/books/nightjar/

8/9 #DSPBposts #SmallPress #books from @catebush.bsky.social @gooselane.bsky.social @garybarwin.bsky.social @robmclennan.bsky.social @cassidymcfadzean.bsky.social ‬@houseofanansi.bsky.social @nataliericepoetry.bsky.social @gaspereaupress.bsky.social 💙📚 #BookSky #bookish #readingchallenge #booktok

Book cover for Crying Dress: Poems by Cassidy McFadzean (House of Anansi): The poems in Crying Dress, acclaimed poet Cassidy McFadzean’s third collection, explore the multiplicity of meaning that arises from fragmentation, rhythm, competing sounds, and ellipsis. Rooted in the tradition of lyric poetry, these strikingly original poems revel in musicality (rhyme, beat, and alliteration) while deploying puns, idiom, and other forms of linguistic play to create a dissonance that challenges the expected coherence of a poem. From the ghosts and gardens of Brooklyn and Sicily to the clanging of garbage chutes in Uno Prii’s modernist high rises in Toronto, to quiet moments of intimacy in domestic spaces, and the early days of sobriety and grief, Crying Dress explores the intersections between noise and coherence, the conversational and the associative, the architectural and the ecological, while reaffirming the poet’s sonic, vertiginous lyricism and gift for overlooked detail. https://houseofanansi.com/products/crying-dress

Book cover for Nightjar by Natalie Rice (Gaspereau Press): The poems in Nightjar form a triptych vision of the way humans both experience and alter the natural world as we pass through it. Straddling between subalpine vistas and the brooks and bowers of the Acadian forest, Rice engages binaries of landscape and human history, loss and gain, the seen and unseen, and direction and distance, her movement between the sublime and the intimate stirring unexpected forces that pull us toward “the empty space where the mountain has fallen.” https://gaspereaupress.com/books/nightjar/

Daily(ish) #SmallPress #books by/from @cassidymcfadzean.bsky.social @houseofanansi.bsky.social @nataliericepoetry.bsky.social @gaspereaupress.bsky.social. See alt-text.

#DSPBposts 💙📚 #BookSky #BooksWorthReading #bookish #readingchallenge #readingcommunity #booktok #booklovers

love your bluesky longpoem era!! 💙🐋

I returned to Blue Sky and I am going to make a valiant attempt to post the books I have read this upcoming year. You may also see doodles.

We’re thrilled to announce that our 2025 – 2026 Poet-in-Residence will be Cassidy McFadzean! From November 2025 to July 2026, Cassidy will be mentoring poets and creating new work for a future issue of Arc Poetry. Do you want to workshop your own poetry with Cassidy? Details here: buff.ly/B072bOs

Cassidy McFadzean’s Crying Dress captures seasons as an artistic expression occupying our internal state. Reviewer Margaryta Golovchenko reflects on the seasons presented in individual sections as the “self that never stops growing, despite the weather.” Read the full review here: buff.ly/nZKdJUc

Who Are You Close To? | Hazlitt I worried I had broken the chatbot by trauma-dumping, and no one, human or machine, had the capacity to console me completely.

New fiction from @cassidymcfadzean.bsky.social: hazlitt.net/longreads/wh...

Inside the campaign that upended CanLit’s ties to Scotiabank and Israeli arms ⋆ The Breach The grassroots campaign that took on the Giller for its ties to the genocide in Gaza forced a broader reckoning in the Canadian literary community

The grassroots campaign that took on the Giller forced the prize to drop Scotiabank over its ties to Israel’s biggest weapons maker—and sparked a broader reckoning in CanLit.

Josiah Neufeld tells the inside story of the organizers who made it happen. breachmedia.ca/scotiabank-i...

💗

Thanks friend 🥹

A new review of Crying Dress in the spring issue of @arcpoetry.bsky.social 🌸

"McFadzean creates the sensation of time unravelling on an individual level as the speaker moves across geographical spaces and emotional states"

Thank you so much, and so nice to see you the other night 💗

Poet Cassidy McFadzean reads at the Best Canadian Poetry 2025 book launch at Queen Books in Toronto - The poet is in the background, against book shelves. Her poem "Storm King" is held up in the foreground.

Poet Cassidy McFadzean gestures, standing in front of bookshelves, as she reads at the Best Canadian Poetry 2025 book launch at Queen Books in Toronto.

"All the apartment's doorknobs have been removed
The last tenant afraid of being locked inside
In a house with no exits"

#TodaysPoem #poetry
Storm King by @cassidymcfadzean.bsky.social (2024 @longconmagazine.bsky.social) in Best Canadian Poetry 2025 (@Biblioasis.bsky.social) tinyurl.com/bpamv6ex

Tonight!!

excited to read with @teresempierre.bsky.social and @cassidymcfadzean.bsky.social for the @theampersandreview.bsky.social reading series at Sheridan College next Thursday!

The book "Dead Writers" by Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Michael LaPointe, Cassidy McFadzean, and Naben Ruthnum against a dark wood background.

It’s publication day for Dead Writers, a collaborative fiction project by Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Michael LaPointe, Cassidy McFadzean, and Naben Ruthnum.

💀

invisiblepublishing.com/product/dead...

In writer @cassidymcfadzean.bsky.social’s “Forest Hill Gothic,” a woman reflects on the domestic routines she witnessed in childhood as she takes up the project of repairing her in-laws’ home: thewalrus.ca/forest-hill-gothic/

“It seemed like an easy fix, replacing the rusted old hose with a shiny new one.”

Read “Forest Hill Gothic,” a new short story from writer @cassidymcfadzean.bsky.social: thewalrus.ca/forest-hill-gothic/

Cassidy McFadzean — Etcetera “I remember a professor at Iowa warning me against reading too much Lucie Brock-Broido, that the baroque exuberance of her poems might send me even further towards the esoteric and obscure. But what I...

"I first found
them in the forest at Blanket as a girl,
not knowing their purpose, drawn
to their pale colour, petals flecked
with black and sometimes glowstick pink."

#TodaysPoem #poetry
Ghost flower by @CassidyMcFadzean.bsky.social (2025 Etcetera Poetry) tinyurl.com/2cn9nz2n

Cassidy McFadzean — Etcetera “I remember a professor at Iowa warning me against reading too much Lucie Brock-Broido, that the baroque exuberance of her poems might send me even further towards the esoteric and obscure. But what I...

A few new poems and some thoughts on books by Lucie Brock-Broido, Emily Skillings, Etel Adnan, Matsuki Masutani, and Mary Jo Bang that have meant a lot to me www.etceterapoetry.com/currentpost/...

Sign the Petition Stop the Suspension of Sheridan’s Creative Writing and Publishing Program

Creative Writing & Publishing students at Sheridan have collected nearly 700 signatures to save their program! www.change.org/p/stop-the-s...

Thanks to
@cassidymcfadzean.bsky.social
for writing this piece. The problems that CW&P faces are problems many institutions face at the moment. Oh, and I can't help but think that valuable programs could be saved only –– oh, if only –– some restructuring *cough*cuts*ahem* could be made at the top.

I’m Sheridan’s writer in residence. Here’s what the college will lose when it suspends a writing program The loss of Sheridan College's creative writing and publishing program will have devastating consequences for Canadian literature.

Great piece by @cassidymcfadzean.bsky.social on the repercussions of axing th Creative Writing & Publishing program at Sheridan College.

I’m Sheridan’s writer in residence. Here’s what the college will lose when it suspends a writing program The loss of Sheridan College's creative writing and publishing program will have devastating consequences for Canadian literature.

Read @cassidymcfadzean.bsky.social’s piece about how @sheridancollege.bsky.social is gutting their acclaimed and successful creative writing and publishing program: www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

This is more than scary! And pretty clear the G1ller Foundation has lost all integrity. Nevermind boycotting, it needs to be entirely dismantled. It's currently being run by directors & staff that are not arm's length, which means it is being run with the inherent biases of ER and related directors.

CanLit Responds Over 20 authors pull work from the 2024 Giller Prize

join us in boycotting the giller until they drop sponsors complicit in genocide! www.canlitresponds.ca/boycott-giller

I hold the poetry collection Crying Dress by Cassidy McFadzean (House of Anansi Press), with its intriguing cover image of, oh, is it a wooden doll? The sleeve of my purple hoodie is visible. A gray carpet and white walls can be seen in the background.

I hold open the poetry collection Crying Dress by Cassidy McFadzean to the poem "Little Island".

"My mask soaks up my tears
I'm just so happy to be here

singing Lucinda Williams's "Like a Rose"
I never stutter when I'm alone"

#TodaysPoem #poetry
Little Island by @cassidymcfadzean.bsky.social from Crying Dress (2024 House of Anansi Press) tinyurl.com/yc5ahtuh

This autumn morning, I remember Matt once showed me how you can start a poem by putting one or two lines in the middle of the page, and then writing out from them, alternating a line before, and then one after. He said this method came to him in a dream. It's always better to start with a phrase, however ordinary, than an idea, however grand.

Matthew Zapruder, from Story of a Poem