Frances McCue is a poet, essayist, reviewer and arts instigator. From 1996-2006, she was the founding director of Richard Hugo House in Seattle. In 2011, McCue became the first writer to win the Washington State Book Award for one book (The Bled, a poetry collection from Factory Hollow Press) and place as a finalist for a second book (The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs, University of Washington Press). The Bled also won the Grub Street National Book Prize and was a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Award. In a review of The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs, her book about the poet Richard Hugo, critics at Rain Taxi said: “What she accomplishes is nothing short of astonishing.” Her first poetry collection, The Stenographer’s Breakfast, won the Barnard New Women’s Poetry Prize.