Jem Casey Explained

Many readers write to ask about Rake contributor Jem Casey. He is modest, and unlikely to speak up for himself, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to answer a few questions that frequently come up.

Under several different pen names, Jem Casey has written stories for magazines like the Oxford American, Ploughshares, the Prairie Schooner, and Harper’s. He also publishes a quarterly newsletter called JUPPER. He has received numerous awards for his short fiction.

Jem Casey is in charge of newspaper clippings at The Rake. As his fans already know, he is frequently the author of the anonymous “newsbreaks” which appear at the bottom of the columns in the print version of The Rake.

Jem Casey is not “the Poet of the Pick” made famous by Irish writer Flann O’Brien. He did not write “the pome that’ll be heard wherever the Irish race is wont to gather.” He is that Jem Casey’s great-grandson, and he too believes that “The Workingman’s Friend” will “live as long as there’s a hard root of an Irishman left by the Almighty on this planet.”

Jem Casey can be reached directly at press@rakemag.com.