Lee Upton attended Michigan State University to earn a BA in Journalism. Next, she attended the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, to earn her MFA. In 1986, she earned a Ph.D. in English literature from Binghamton University. Her first book of poetry, The Invention of Kindness, was published in 1984. Upton did not limit herself to poetry, co-authoring a collection of short stories in the form of a children’s book called On Stage Tonight, as well as publishing over forty short stories.
Her publications include Beer Garden (1978), Small Locks: Poems (1979), Sudden Distances (1988), No Mercy (1989), Approximate Darling: Poems (1996), and Undid in the Land of Undone (2007). Her work as earned her a National Poetry Series Award, a Pushcart Prize, twice the winner of Georgie Contemporary Poetry Series Award, a Lyric Poetry Award, and The Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award. Lee Upton currently is an English professor at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania.
“Brave Spirit” and “A Tour” appeared in Issue 5.1-Winter 1993. Her interview If I Owe You, I Want to Pay You and poem “Provincial Love” appeared in Issue 7.2-Summer 1995. A review of Lee Upton’s Approximate Darling was featured in Issue 9.1-Winter/Spring 1997. Her poetry “Elizabeth Bishop” and “A Little Ween” appeared in Issue 9.2-Summer/Fall 1997.
