McCabe to receive President's Award for faculty excellence

Dr. Nancy McCabe, professor of writing, will receive the President's Award for Excellence in Teaching, Scholarship and Service at commencement exercises April 29.

Dr. Livingston Alexander, president of Pitt-Bradford, will present McCabe with the award, which was created to recognize faculty who perform at the highest level in the principal areas of faculty responsibility: teaching, scholarship and service.

“Dr. McCabe is the consummate scholar whose publications have enthralled colleagues and readers in the general public throughout her stellar career,” said Dr. Livingston Alexander, president. “She is remarkably talented and takes delight in mentoring emerging writers, most notably through her work as an advisor for the Baily's Beads student literary magazine.”

McCabe has taught writing and been the director of the university's writing program since 2001.

Aside from directing and teaching in the Pitt-Bradford writing program, Dr. McCabe is a prolific writer, having authored one novel and four memoirs. Her work has won a prestigious 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, Crazyhorse, Massachusetts Review and Writer's Digest, among others. In recent years, she has been a regular contributing writer and reviewer for the blog of the literary journal Ploughshares.

She has taught workshops in creative nonfiction, poetry and journalism for roughly three decades at six colleges and universities. In addition to her work at Pitt-Bradford, she also teaches in the brief-residency program in creative writing at Spalding University.

McCabe's most recent published work is her first novel, “Following Disasters,” published in 2016 by Outpost19. Her four previous books are all memoirs: “From Little Houses to Little Women: Revisiting a Literary Childhood,” published by the University of Missouri Press in 2014 and made available in paperback this year; “Crossing the Blue Willow Bridge: A Journey to My Daughter's Birthplace in China” published by the University of Missouri Press in 2011; “Meeting Sophie: A Memoir of Adoption,” published by the University of Missouri Press in 2003; and “After the Flashlight Man: A Memoir of Awakening,” published by Purdue University Press in 2003.

In the realm of service to the university, she is currently president of the faculty senate and is serving on the presidential search committee. In recent years, she has established a successful common reader program for the freshman class and community-at-large. She also coordinates the new gender, sexuality and women's studies program.

At Pitt-Bradford, she received the Chairs' Faculty Teaching Award for excellence in teaching in 2005. She is also a recipient of a 2007 Individual Artist's Fellowship in Literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

She holds a doctorate in English from the University of Nebraska, a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Arkansas, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Wichita State University. She lives in Bradford.