Nancy McCabe has published more than 300 essays, poems, stories, blogs, and reviews. Below is a sampling of her work.
Essays
- “That Good Night,” Belt Magazine, May 10, 2023.
- “Stuck Together,” Chautauqua, Fall 2022 (released winter 2023).
- “Breaking Your Heart Open without Breaking the Bank, Financial Tips for Single Parents,” Women Talk Money: Breaking the Taboo, ed. Rebecca Walker. Simon and Schuster, March 2022, paperback released March 2023.
- “Playing by the Rules,” Manifest Station, January 2022.
- “Rapture in the Zoom,” Salon, September 2021, (reprinted in December as part of Best of Salon)
- “Crimes Against Property” Another Chicago Magazine, September 2021.
- “Tearing Down the House” Essay Daily, June 2021.
- “Far-Side Banks of Jordan” Entropy, April 2021.
- “The Inmost Cave” Michigan Quarterly Review, fall 2018.
- “Dairy Cows: A Glossary for the Farmer’s Girlfriend before her Child Leaves Home” Literary Mama, spring 2018.
- “Breathing on Your Own: How to Overcome that Nasal Spray Addiction” in Punctuate.
- “Composing the Air” Literary Mama: Writing about the Many Faces of Motherhood, December 2015.
- “The Baby Room” in Oh Baby! True Stories about Conception, Adoption, Surrogacy, Pregnancy, Labor, and Love. In Fact Books, Creative Nonfiction Foundation, October 2015.
- “Gifts” reprinted in Every Father’s Daughter: 24 Women Writers Remember Their Fathers, Ed. by Margaret McMullan, McPherson and Company, April 2015.
- “Rereading Childhood” The Looking Glass: New Perspectives on Children’s Literature, Spring 2012.
- “Can This Troubled Marriage be Saved: a Quiz” Bellingham Review, Spring/Summer 2010.
- “A Bogeyman with Supernatural Powers” My Turn, Newsweek, Oct. 17, 2005.
- “The End of the Tunnel” The Pushcart Prize XXV: Best of the Small Presses, Fall 2000, 468-479.
Craft, Criticism, and Teaching
- “Writing the Story of a Marriage” The Brevity Blog, January 2022.
- “The Interrelatedness of the Arts for Amateurs” Good River Review, November 2022.
- “A Writer’s Canine Companion,” Good River Review
- “Writing as Therapy” Creativity and Compassion: Spalding Writers Celebrate Twenty
- Years, Naslund-Mann School of Writing, Fall 2021.
- “Playing with Story Structure: Memoir and Borrowed Forms” Creativity and
- Compassion: Spalding Writers Celebrate Twenty Years, Naslund-Mann School of Writing, Fall 2021.
- “Beauty in Imperfection,” Good River Review, reprinted in Creativity and Compassion: Spalding Writers Celebrate
- Twenty Years, Naslund-Mann School of Writing, Fall 2021.
- Productivity: Finding Time to Make Time,” Good River Review, January 2020.
- “Laura and Rose and Nancy and Emily: Two Women Writers Talk Prairie Fires” Prairie Fires Readalong, Chapter 12 (a conversation with Emily Anderson), Beyond Little House, February 2019.
- “From ‘Unlearned Poet’ to ‘Untutored Housewife’: Laura Ingalls Wilder and Samuel Worthen Ingalls,” Little House on the Prairie Website, Ed Friendly Productions, May 2016.
- “Laura Ingalls Wilder and Samuel Worthen Ingalls: Discovering the Roots of Favorite Childhood Books in Cuba, NY” Ploughshares Online, May 2016.
- “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Artistic Development” Little House on the Prairie Website, Ed Friendly Productions, September 2015.
- My Role Model is a Roll of Toilet Paper: Writing with Passion and the Limits of Machines” Good River Review, May 2105. Link doesn’t work—here is updated:
- “Rereading Childhood” The Looking Glass: New Perspectives on Children’s Literature, Spring 2012.
- “Glory, Glory Hallelujah, Teacher Hit Me with A Ruler: Subversive Children’s Songs, Gender and Violence” Studies in Popular Culture, April 1998, 71-82.
- Making Poems: Writing Exercises for the Classroom. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas, 1988. 83 pages.
Fiction
- After the Coma at The Citron Review, December 2013.
- “Lucy’s House,” Lincoln Review, Summer 1997, 72-87.
- “Knotted Links”Green Hills Literary Lantern, Spring 1992, Volume 4, 5-13.
- “Flight” A Necessary Scavenger. Little Rock: Words, 1991, 111-123.
Poetry
- Evening Street, “Multiflora Rose,” “Not That Kind of Crown,” “Bat Season,” forthcoming fall 2023.
- Ravensperch, “My Mother Forgets,” “Nowhere and Everywhere Sestina,” “Flat Tire,” and “Home Safe,” January 2023.
- Chautauqua: “Looking for Mt. Fuji,” Fall 2022.
- Coachella Review: “Combing a Niece’s Hair,” “Pajama Dolls,” January 2022.
- Nelle: “Seneca Falls, Halloween Weekend 2016,” Spring 2021.
- Spillway: “Corn,” Fall 2021, “Haunted,” Summer 2018.
- The Rail: “Amaryllis,” “Going to the Moon,” February 2021.
- Literary Mama: “Spinning Daughter,” September 2020
- The Louisville Anthology, Belt Publishing, “Cave Hill Cemetery,” Fall 2020.
- Westchester Review, “Eclipse,” Spring 2020.
- Harpur Palate, “Mammogram Follow Up,” Fall 2018.