CW Grads, Abby Murray and Lish McBride, publish a poetry chapbook and a YA novel

I had lunch with two of CW's star alums yesterday--poet Abby Murray and YA novelist Lish McBride. We caught up over fake sweet and sour chicken at Bamboo Gardens. Abby brought me a jar of home made strawberry-alcohol jam for Christmas, and Lish brought me a big container of homemade eggnog snickerdoodle cookies. I gave them my latest batch of poems in the current Floating Bridge Review 3 and brought Abby a Box of Hope (hope not included) and Lish a bar of Wash your Soul Clean soap (both re-gifted from Fr. Josef Venker, S.J.--chair of SU's Fine Arts Department-- who receives more corny religious stuff than the ordinary priest). Given the fact that Abby is a poet (God knows, we poets need hope) and Lish is riding the great wave of interest in fiction of the occult (and may be spoiled rotten with advances, movie deals, etc.) the re-gifts seemed appropriate.

Abby lives in Denver now that her husband Tom is posted to Iraq, and teaches writing, conducts a reading series, and continues working on her own successful poetry. She graduated from SU's Creative Writing program in 2005 and got her MFA from Pacific University, Oregon. Her chapbook, "Me & Coyote," was chosen by Marvin Bell for the Lost Horse New Poets Series and is the featured first collection.

Lish came to SU's Creative Writing program as transfer student, graduated with Abby in 2005 and got her MFA at the University of New Orleans. Now she's got a five-star YA novel climbing the charts--no less a judge than Sherman Alexie says "This is a funny scary book, or a scary funny book. In either case, it's a GREAT book. I love it!" Lish lives in town--we'll be having her on our E2 Reading series at Elliott Bay soon, so stay tuned.

Check out Abby and Lish's books on Amazon below:

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Horse-Press-New-Poets/dp/0984451021/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1293594223&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Hold-Closer-Necromancer-Lish-McBride/dp/0805090983/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1293592382&sr=8-1