My first published collection of stories. 

American Animism

Animals inhabit the edges of the stories in American Animism. Some of the stories veer between realism and magical realism, but there is something at the center of each of these stories that makes them unique. A girl working in a cryptid museum, a boy in the attic of a gift shop on Mystery Hill, a vacation house in Nova Scotia where strange things happen: these are stories of transformation and becoming. 

Named one of Literary Hub's 100 Notable Small Press Books 2025

"American Animism is a triumph. With a deeply empathetic eye and a natural-born writer's ear, Jamey Gallagher fearlessly enters the morally ambivalent and deeply subjective realm of his characters. Jamey Gallagher is a major talent!"

-Andre Dubus III, National Book Award finalist, author of House of Sand and Fog

"This story collection is the work of a true narrative virtuoso. Jamey Gallagher works in the realms of fear and violence as well as he does tenderness and nostalgia. All the notes are here, and each is masterfully played. American Animism is a collection of small treasures, told with an honesty and insight that pull you deeply into new worlds, and leaves you pondering your own."

-Tom Coyne, New York Times bestselling author, A Course Called America

"Jamey Gallagher is a master of simple, poignant narratives of displacement, dislocation, and abandonment. The stress here-as it should be-is on the emotional lives, the quiet inner storms, of individuals enduring or recovering from dramas and traumas. No specific location, apart from North America itself, limits Gallagher's vision and concern, and as a whole these sad sojourns and whispery odysseys produce a detailed topography of the bumpy swales of the American soul. A brilliant debut."

-J.C. Hallman, author of Say Anarcha

"Damn, these stories are good. The lean prose recalls the best of noir fiction, but there's more here than first meets the eye. Unflinching forays into such a dizzying array of worlds, narrators, and dramatic situations that it's hard to believe they all came from the same imagination. You can't predict where these stories are going, but you quickly realize it will be worth the ride. Buckle up and hang on."

-Christopher Chambers, author of Kind of Blue

This is my second published collection of stories. This one is dark and gritty. 

Bodies in Bags is a grit lit/crime collection so visceral you can smell it. A bad cop in New Hampshire dealing with the consequences of shooting an intruder, a drifter who wakes up next to her dead companion in Atlantic City, a veteran fleeing to South Jersey after an impulsive crime: these are stories of desperation and recompense, told in tough but tender voices. The stories deal with issues of masculinity, consequences, violence, and uncontrollable impulses.

"With a deeply empathetic eye and a natural-born writer's ear, Jamey Gallagher fearlessly enters the morally ambivalent and deeply subjective realm of his characters."

-Andre Dubus III, National Book Award Finalist

"Steel=hinged and hard-won. The best kind of fiction."

-Benjamin Drevlow, author of Honky

"Jamey Gallagher works in the realms of fear and violence as well as he does tenderness and nostalgia."

-Tom Coyne, New York Times Bestselling Author

"Dark, tender, and masterful."

-Anna Vangala Jones, author of Turmeric & Sugar: Stories

"This you can bank on: Stephen King said you like it darker; Leonard Cohen said, no, you want it darker. Jamey Gallagher, with Bodies in Bags, paints it black."

-Jeff Esterholm, author of The Effects of Urban Renewal on Mid-Century America and Other Crime Stories

"Raw and real . . . Gallagher makes plots with all the tenderness of a switchblade."

-Toby LeBlanc, author of Soaked

I am Idris Elba is my first published longer work. It is novella or a short comic novel. 

"This is today. Today I am feeling quite edgy and spiky. Like my insides don’t quite match up with my outsides. Which is no surprise, I suppose. Even back in my heyday, I never felt like the Idris Elba that other people saw. The inner Idris was always something somewhat different than the outer Idris, especially when the outer Idris was being lauded for his good looks. An international celebrity, a talented actor, and a sex symbol. A sex symbol? World’s Sexiest Man? Ha. No one, I’m convinced, feels like they are truly the world’s sexiest man, not inside, but least of all me, Idris Elba from Northern London. Ha. I wouldn’t say that I felt ugly when other people saw me as beautiful, but maybe just a wee bit I did. There is ugliness in all beauty, of course, yes yes, but that is not the main cause for confusion. I always suspected there was a little bit of cancer in my looks. A little lie. Something devious. Maybe in all looks but in mine most definitely."

I Am Idris Elba is the chronicle of a man who may or may not be Idris Elba, and Jamey Gallagher turns that premise into a strange, sly performance on the fringes of literary fiction. Gallagher, whose short story collection American Animism is available from Cornerstone Press and whose Bodies in Bags arrives in March 2026, folds his sharp instincts into a novella that plays with ideas of celebrity and the unexpected while never abandoning the quiet pulse of a small neighborhood in Baltimore.

The voice is irresistible. “I am Idris Elba. No, really. I am.” From that opening pledge, the narrator tromples through his days with his dog Tolstoy, drifting between Russian Literature I and II, Macroeconomics, Chinese History, and the odd, uncanny stillness of Pentecostal Coffee. The charm is in the contradictions: the international stratosphere brushing up against a detached hobbity house, the rizz of a fading star mingling with a yearning for anonymity. It might be a weird comedy, but it is also a tender exploration of the very air we breathe.

I have published a number of flash fiction stories in places like:

Milk Candy Review

Gone Lawn

Necessary Fiction

Euonia Review

X-RAY

I hope to collect them and seek publication soon.

I have served as a reader and reviewer for the 100 Notable Small Press Books project for 2025 and 2026. I have published one longer review, of Emily Greenberg's fantastic Alterntive Facts.

In 2026, Cowboy Jamboree published I Feel Just Like a Dogwood Tree, which features stories inspired by Terry Allen's album Jaurez. I contributed "Love as an Act of Revenge" to the collection.

Crumblehead is a chapbook that won the 2013 Gambling the Aisle chapbook contest. It is made out of flash fiction pieces.