Leah Bodine Drake was born on December 22, 1904 in Chanute, Kansas to Thomas and Cornelia (née Bodine) Drake. Her father worked in the oil industry. Drake was sent to the Oakhurst School for Girls in Cincinnati and later attended Hamilton College, a junior college operated by Transylvania University, in Lexington, Kentucky as well as Sayre College in the same city.

Drake began publishing poetry in 1935 and is primarily known as a poet, although she also published some short fiction. From 1936-1937, She appeared as a Billy Rose dancer in the Fort Worth Centennial Exposition. Drake’s first published poem was “In the Shadows,” which appeared in the October 1935 issue of Weird Tales. The same issue of Weird Tales included the first of eight letters she had published in the magazine. Her letters indicated that she haunted used book stores searching for old back-issues of Weird Tales, which she said were rare and more expensive than other magazines. She would go on to publish nearly three dozen poems in the magazine.

Drake’s poetry appeared in a wide variety of magazines. In addition to Weird Tales, it could be found in Nature, The Arkham Sampler, The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, The Beloit Poetry Review, Country Bard, and more. Her “Ballad of the Jabberwork” was first published in the August Derleth-edited anthology Dark of the Moon, which included eight of her poems.

From 1941 through 1951, Drake worked as a music and theatre critic for the Evansville Courier and edited The Baton, a monthly newsletter for the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, of which she was a board member. In 1950, she published her first poetry collection, A Hornbook for Witches, with Arkham House. With only 553 copies published, 300 of which were given to Drake, this is considered one of the rarest Arkham House books. (Seven copies currently listed on line range from $1,433 to $6,250). In 1976, Vincent Price released an audio recording of himself reading four of the poems from the collection.

In 1947, Drake expanded into fiction, writing the short story “Time and the Sphinx,” which may not have been published until the February 1965 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction. However, her story “Whisper Water” was did appear in the May 1953 issue of Weird Tales, three months later, Fantasy Fiction published her story “Foxy’s Hollow,” and Weird Tales published “Mop-Head” in the January 1954 issue. These four short stories appear to be her only prose fiction publications.

She left Evansville for Henderson, Kentucky in 1953 and worked as a special features writer for the Henderson Gleaner and Journal until her mother died in 1956, when she and her father moved to Parkersburg, West Virginia.  For a year in Parkerburg, she worked as a poetry reviewer for The Atlantic Monthly. During her time in Henderson, Drake released her second collection of poetry, This Tilting Dust, which was published by The Golden Quill Press.

Drake’s father died in 1963, and Drake died just over a year later of cancer on November 21, 1964. She and her father are buried in Parkersburg Memorial Gardens in Parkersburg, West Virginia. At the time of her death, she had prepared a third volume of poetry for publication, which she called Multiple Clay. The volume was not published, but works from it were included in the 2020 posthumous volume The Song of the Sun: Collected Writings, edited by David E. Schultz.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-two-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.