Holly Peppe

2024 Family Choice Award Winner 2024 Purple Dragonfly Award tied First Place Charity/Making a Difference categoryA portion of proceeds for the book will be donated to anti-bullying advocates Sophie is a little girl who lives beside a lake and makes friends with a pair of swans who visit her every day. One day, when a bully starts to torment the swans, Sophie rushes to defend them not by attacking the bully, but by showing him kindness when he gets into trouble on the lake.

The first publication of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s private, intimate diaries, providing “a candid self-portrait of the ‘bad girl of American letters’” (Kirkus Reviews) “Provides an occasion to revisit not just [Millay’s] improbable life but also her sometimes revelatory work.”—Abigail Deutsch, Wall Street Journal “Rapture and Melancholy paints a picture of artistic triumph, romantic tumult, and a daily life that descended into addiction.”—Heather Clark, New York Times Book Review The English author Thomas Hardy proclaimed that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper, and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. In these diaries the great American poet illuminates not only her literary genius, but her life as a devoted daughter, sister, wife, and public heroine; and finally as a solitary, tragic figure. This is the first publication of the diaries she kept from adolescence until middle age, between 1907 and 1949, focused on her most productive years. Who was the girl who wrote “Renascence,” that marvel of early twentieth-century poetry? What trauma or spiritual journey inspired the poem? And after such celebrity why did she vanish into near seclusion after 1940? These questions hover over the life and work, and trouble biographers and readers alike. Intimate, eloquent, these confessions and keen observations provide the key to understanding Millay’s journey from small-town obscurity to world fame, and the tragedy of her demise.

An annotated selection of the letters of the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay, from childhood through the last year of her life Throughout her life, Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote hundreds of letters, which together create a colorful tapestry of her inner life. This selection, based on archival research, represents Millay’s correspondence from 1900, when she was eight, until 1950, the last year of her life. Through her letters, readers encounter the vast range of Millay’s interests, including world literature, music, and horse racing, as well as her commitment to gender equality and social justice. This collection, edited by Timothy F. Jackson, includes previously unpublished correspondence, as well as letters containing early versions of poems, revealing new dimensions in Millay’s creative process and influences. It is enriched by Jackson’s thoughtful introduction and notes, plus a foreword by Millay’s literary executor, Holly Peppe. Millay’s observations on her inner life and the world around her—which speak to contemporary concerns as well—add to our understanding of American literature in the first half of the twentieth century.