Professor Lee Upton Wins Prestigious Writing Prize

Lee Upton, writer-in-residence and professor of English, is winner of the second annual BOA Editions Short Fiction Prize for her collection The Tao of Humiliation.

Lee Upton, writer-in-residence and professor of English, wrote the award-winning The Tao of Humiliation

The collection will be published in spring 2014 by BOA Editions, Ltd. Upton is delighted that her stories will have such a “distinguished, exciting, and warm home.”

Individual stories in the collection were published in such journals as Antioch Review, Ascent, Confrontation, Flash Forward: The Incredible Shrinking Story, Hotel Amerika, Idaho Review, In Posse Review, Roanoke Review, and Short Fiction (England).

BOA Publisher Peter Conners says what impressed him most was Upton’s ability “to peel back layers of experience, revealing the complexity of human emotion buried in even our simplest interaction.”

“Upton tells a great story, yes, but she never bows to easy answers or pre-packaged characterizations,” he says. “Instead, she offers up stories with true depth, insight, and enough twists to keep any reader enthralled. To write with such skill and sensitivity takes great life experience and the patience of a master writer.”

Upton is the author of 12 books, including  the collection of essays Swallowing the Sea: On Writing & Ambition, Boredom, Purity, & Secrecy; the novella The Guide to the Flying Island; five books of poetry, including Undid in the Land of Undone; and four books of literary criticism. Her short stories and poems appear widely. Her awards include the Lyric Poetry Award and The Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Pushcart Prize, the National Poetry Series Award, and the Miami University Novella Award.