McCabe essay included in 'Every Father's Daughter' anthology

Dr. Nancy McCabe, professor of writing, is keeping some elite company with her inclusion in a new anthology, "Every Father's Daughter: Essays by Daughters about their Fathers."

Officially launched at the end of May, the book of essays from McPherson and Co. by 24 women writers remembering their fathers is out in time for Father's Day June 21.

"I was pleased that the book came out when it did," McCabe said. "My newest book ('From Little Houses to Little Women: Revisiting a Literary Childhood') is a tribute to my mother and the books she passed on to me, so it provides a nice balance that I also published an essay about what my dad passed on to me."

McCabe's essay, "Gifts," is "about the presents my dad gave me," she said. "It's about the talents and interests we pass down from one generation to another. My dad and I had very different ways of seeing the world, but looking back, I see all the ways he tried to bridge those gaps."

Other writers who contributed essays include Jane Smiley, Alice Munro and Bobbie Ann Mason, with whom McCabe shared a launch party event at Carmichael's independent bookseller in Louisville, Ky. On May 23, Simultaneous launch events took place across the country. Each featured at least one of the anthologized essayists.

"Publisher's Weekly cited this as the first event of its kind," McCabe said of the launch, which also connected the stores around the country via Skype teleconferencing software. "Bobbie Ann and I were Skyping with Jane Smiley in one corner and Philip Lopate (who wrote the introduction) in another.

"It was a huge honor to read with Bobbie Ann Mason, whose work I read and taught when I was a young graduate student."

McCabe is director of the writing program at Pitt-Bradford. Before publishing her most recent memoir, her three previous books were "Crossing the Blue Willow Bridge: A Journey to My Daughter's Birthplace in China," "Meeting Sophie: A Memoir of Adoption," and "After the Flashlight Man: A Memoir of Awakening."

Her work has won a Pushcart Prize and been listed six times in the notable sections of Houghton-Mifflin Best American anthologies. Her essays have appeared in Newsweek, Prairie schooner, Fourth Genre, Crazyhorse, Massachusetts Review and Writer's Digest, among other places.

In addition to being director of the writing program at Pitt-Bradford, she is a faculty member in the brief-residency Master of Fine Art program in creative writing at Spalding University in Louisville.

"Every Father's Daughter" can be ordered through The Panther Shop at Pitt-Bradford.