Jesse McCarthy

Jesse McCarthy (born c. 1984) is an American writer, novelist, and critic who serves as assistant professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Educated at Amherst College (BA 2006), Princeton (MA 2013, PhD 2018), he is best known for his essay collection Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? (2021, winner of the Whiting Award for Nonfiction), the novel The Fugitivities (2021), and the scholarly monograph The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War (2024, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism). His work explores African American literature, culture, politics, and aesthetics.Harvard AAAS, Harvard English, Whiting