He attended University College Cork where he was part of a resurgence of literary activity under the inspiration of John Montague.
Among McCarthy's contemporaries, described by Thomas Dillon Redshaw as "that remarkable generation", were the writers and poets Theo Dorgan, Sean Dunne, Greg Delanty, Maurice Riordan and William Wall.
He has published seven collections of poetry with Anvil Press Poetry, London, including The Sorrow Garden, The Lost Province, Mr Dineen's Careful Parade, The Last Geraldine Officer,[1] and Merchant Prince.
His monograph "Rising from the Ashes" tells the story of the burning of the Carnegie Free Library in Cork City by the Black and Tans in 1920 and the subsequent efforts to rebuild the collection with the help of donors from all over the world.
[3] McCarthy is also a contributor to a series of podcasts made by Podcasts.ie (under the Arts Council of Ireland’s Literature Project Awards) called The Writer's Passage in which 10 Irish authors take a personal tour through the locations of their books.