McKay, Becka

Some Years Ago, My Mother was Possessed is a poetry chapbook exploring a familial lineage of abuse through fictional exit interviews taken after points of emotional and physical trauma or abuse. Through surreal landscapes and speculative futures, the poems explore the remnants of abuse, and the fear of being possessed by her family’s history of motherhood.

I Would Rather Talk About Persimmons aims to understand the roots of trauma, addiction, and lineage. A discovery of what it means to be half American, half Albanian. A discovery of loving the people in our lives no matter how imperfect, no matter how painful no matter the sacrifice. The work seeks to understand the existence of joy and pain in the ways they work together and by doing so we see that emotions of the human experience are not linear, rather chaotic.

This creative thesis is a collection of poems and lyric forms that explore queer identity and difference through the fraught navigation of heteronormative spaces and institutions such as the American school system, the Catholic Church, and marriage. Included are letters-as-poems, journal fragments, and extended lyrical sequences that serve to highlight the significance of community and chosen family to queer identity. When they aren’t addressed to an imagined recipient, they are dedicated to or in conversation with friends, family, lovers, strangers, past selves, and other writers. Although the three sections (LETTERS, FIRE, and HEARTH) that demarcate this work chart a thematic chronology that organizes stages of a queer life, memory isn’t cleanly linear. Poems pour into and echo each other, signifying embodied history in the present and the past’s bearings on queer (re)imaginings of the future.

Self-Gardening seeks to explore the oftentime selfish rationale behind seemingly selfless decisions. In dissecting my motivation, I found insecurity. I don't garden for the joy of it, I garden to feel valuable. Beneath my desire for children, lives the terrifying hesitation of putting more bad into the world. While this thesis does look to shine a light on uncomfortability and insecurity, it has no interest in poking or prodding them. Acknowledgement and awareness are enough.

Imagine Me Like That offers an exploration into an experience of one coming to terms with one’s unique trans and queer identity through ecological and nature-based connections, as well as through interpersonal connections. This collection utilizes both poetry and lyric essay to offer insights into the joys of queer ways of living, while also acknowledging the difficulties of occupying a marginalized identity. Ultimately, Imagine Me Like That seeks to affirm and acknowledge the multi-faceted modes of queer existence.

body as / is a collection of poetry exploring the body, mental health, spirituality, environment, and family.

Book Where Every Poem is a Spoke on a Wheel of the Party Wagon is a collection of poems that experiment with formal poetic structures to challenge abusive familial and religious structures, repurposing faithful sensibility to empower an irreverent speaker. Poems in this collection rewrite prayers, revise the outcomes of familial estrangement, and recollect history in order to reclaim the author’s queer American childhood, adulthood, and Catholic faith traditions.

Enclaves is a fiction novel set on an Earth ravaged by climate change and follows characters trying to find meaning in a life constantly threatened by weather. It addresses themes of adventure, death, competition, and capitalistic consequence.

Journalists are supposed to stay neutral. But, when it comes to reporting on a viral protest against a gay conversion therapy program, young, lesbian reporter Anna Mitchell isn’t so sure she agrees with what’s neutral anymore. Gay Christian Speed Dating takes place in Iowa City, Iowa and follows Anna Mitchell, who has moved in with her parents after getting laid off from her prestigious breaking news job. When performance artist college kids go viral protesting a local gay conversion therapy program, it might be Anna’s one shot to get back in the journalism game. But Anna has conflicts of interest: a crush on the girl who is leading the protest, and, even worse, her own opinions on the subject matter that she can’t seem to keep from spilling. This contemporary new adult novel is 42,000 words in a tone of The Great Believers meets Priestdaddy.