Lee Upton is the author of four books of poetry and three books of criticism. Her fourth book of poetry, Civilian Histories, was recently selected as a winner in the Georgia Contemporary Poetry Series and will be published by the University of Georgia Press. Her first book of poetry, The Invention of Kindness, was published in the University of Alabama Poetry Series. Her second book of poetry, No Mercy, a winner in the National Poetry Series, was published by Atlantic Monthly Press. Her third book of poetry, Approximate Darling, was the recipient of the Georgia Contemporary Poetry Series Award and was published by the University of Georgia Press. She is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize and a contributing editor of the Denver Quarterly. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, the Yale Review, and the Harvard Review, and are forthcoming in l999 in the New Republic, the Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Salmangudi, and other journals. Her fiction has appeared in the Antioch Review, Northwest Review, Bellingham Review, and Shenandoah, and is forthcoming in the Denver Quarterly and Glimmer Train. She is the author of Jean Garrigue: A Poetics of Plenitude and Obsession and Release: Rereading the Poetry of Louise Bogan. Her third book of criticism, The Muse of Abandonment: Origin, Identity, Mastery in Five American Poets, recently appeared from Bucknell University Press. A special issue of the Denver Quarterly, devoted to analyses of the poetry of James Tate, and guest-edited by Upton, appeared in fall l998.

Upton is Professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.