Karen Frances McCarthy

Dr. Karen Frances McCarthy specializes in spectral and speculative fiction and its intersections with cultural, psychological, and religious narratives. She holds a doctorate in English literature from the University of Birmingham in the UK. She is the author of two books, including Till Death Don’t Us Part (White Crow Books, 2020), a work of creative nonfiction focused on spectrality, and The Re-enchanted Ghost in Contemporary American Fiction (Routledge, 2026), which examines an emerging trend in spectrality and liminality within twenty-first century American fiction. She teaches at various institutions, including creative writing at Edinburgh’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Center and spectral and speculative literature at NYU SPS.