Q&A with Lee Upton

 

 

 

Lee Upton is the author of the new novel Tabitha, Get Up. Her other books include the poetry collection The Day Every Day Is. She is the Francis A. March Professor Emerita and Writer in Residence at Lafayette College.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Tabitha, Get Up, and how did you create your character Tabitha?

A: Tabitha, Get Up and a second novel, Wrongful (Sagging Meniscus, 2025), both emerged from one failed short story I wrote. I eventually realized that the story’s plot line—about two literary festivals 10 years apart—was too complex and many-layered even for a long short story, and so I refashioned and extended the story into a novel-length literary mystery.

 

Tabitha was part of that original failed short story. The sound of her voice appeared in an email written by a character, a biographer, whose way of expressing herself was so galloping and desperate that I didn’t want to stop writing that email for her.

 

Yet in the original story the biographer was a somewhat meddling, self-glorifying person, and I couldn’t imagine spending 300 pages with her.

 

And so I took the rhythms from her email and dreamed up Tabitha—who is desperate too, but loyal and kind and sometimes almost unbearably honest about her own inadequacies and has very low expectations of herself but a high tolerance for everyone else, and I thought: yes, I can work with her.

 

I liked writing about a woman in her 50s—a woman who has had time to fail repeatedly and to regret her failures and who continues trying to make even her earliest dreams come to fruition. And she does this all while resisting the most dead-headed views about any woman’s worth after the age of 35.

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

A: The title is almost a prescription: Tabitha needs to become alert and able to summon her power. At one particularly low point she also needs to get up off the floor.

 

Q: The author Brock Clarke said of the book, “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.” What do you think of that description?

A: I am wildly grateful for that description!

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the novel?

A: I hope people feel strengthened by the novel’s humor—and by experiencing Tabitha’s persistence and her ability to question and re-question her own motivations and to rise every morning and face the world, even when she’s feeling wretched.

 

There’s a phrase “weak with laughter.” It’s true about how laughter can make us feel weak—my daughters make me laugh so hard I have to put my head on my knees as if I’m in the crash position on an airplane.

 

But while we can feel weak with laughter, it’s laughter that gives us a stronger, broader, more forgiving perspective, that allows us relief from so much that may otherwise overwhelm and stun us. Through humor we can reframe our lives and accept ourselves for being so entirely, unmistakably, incurably human with all our flaws.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m attempting to write a new novel and it’s giving me all sorts of trouble, but that kind of trouble is interesting and expected. Always, I write poetry, which has been a sustaining art for me.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Writing this novel helped me during a difficult time in my life while a family member (who is now in remission) faced a serious illness that required prolonged treatment and hospitalizations.

 

To keep my strength during that period I turned to Tabitha. Creating her voice brought me a measure of peace and allowed me while I wrote to breathe a bit better. By now, as strange as it sounds, I feel as if I actually know her. 

 

Thank you for these questions about Tabitha, Get Up!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb