Congratulations to Lee Upton on the upcoming release of Tabitha, Get Up. The novel will be available on May 22nd 2024 from Sagging Meniscus Press, and is available now for preorder.
Tabitha is a lonely fifty-year-old biographer who, in order to restore her self-respect and pay her rent, attempts to write two biographies simultaneously: one about an actor so famous his face is on the side of buses, and the other about a popular writer of children’s books recently outed as an author of erotic fiction. Is Tabitha ready to deal with interviewing an actor so handsome and charismatic she thinks he should be bottled and sprayed on belligerent people as a form of crowd control? Can she form a genuine friendship with a cult novelist who pressures her to compromise her values? While facing these and other challenges, Tabitha is bedeviled by memories of her long-ago divorce and the terrible wedding when, accidently bumped on a balcony, she shot off into the shrubbery. Is it true, she wonders, that there’s probably a dead body beneath the floating rot of any marriage? When surrounded by pretentious beautiful people does it help to imagine their intestines are full of worms? Are champagne bubbles the devil’s air pockets? Is it ever too late to change your life—from the bottom up?
Tabitha, Get Up has received significant praise!
“For starters, Lee Upton’s novel Tabitha, Get Up is funny—really, really funny. On top of that, narrator Tabitha’s clumsy, desperate, charming search for human connection—not to mention a paying gig—is also a serious look at whether it’s possible to bluff and hustle a life together. You’re going to love this book.”
David Ebenbach, author of The Guy We Didn’t Invite to the Orgy
Its protagonist, Tabitha, is a glorious piece of work: a biographer with a feverish mind and a long list of antagonists and an indomitable spirit and an unforgettable voice and major money problems. I wouldn’t want anyone to live her life, but I very much want everyone to read her book.
Brock Clarke, author of Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? and I, Grape
“There is no form of the novel—the novel takes forms. Lee Upton’s
Michael Martone, author of Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana
comely new novel presents as a series of exquisite ‘Notes’—to self,
to random others, to you who finds them. Riding herd, Upton
wrangles a novel that writes itself and rights itself.”
You can read Lee Upton’s story, “After the Party,” in Issue 17 of s[r].
Lee Upton is an author of books of poetry, fiction, and literary criticism. Another of her novels, a literary mystery, will be out in May 2025. Her books include her seventh collection of poetry, The Day Every Day Is (Saturnalia Books 2023), two short story collections, a novella, four books of literary criticism, and an essay collection. Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and Southern Review, as well as three editions of Best American Poetry. She is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, the National Poetry Series Award, Poetry Society of America awards, the Miami University Novella Prize, the Open Book Award, the Saturnalia Book Prize, and other honors. You can keep up to date with Lee’s goings on on her website.
