Hilda Conklin (1910 - 1986) was born in New York, but grew up in Massachusetts. Her mother was an English professor and a poet, and Hilda began composing poems and narrating them to her mother when she was only four years old. Three collections of Hilda's poems were published--all of them composed before this "child-poet prodigy" turned 15. Though she didn't continue writing poems as an adult, Hilda maintained a close connection with words: she worked as a bookstore manager.