July 20, 1894 [Modesto, California]–May 25, 1969 [Los Angeles]
Le Prade was born near Modesto, California to William and Mary Coward (she dropped her last name as a teenager). She moved to Los Angeles around 1913, where she spent the rest of her life. She was discovered by poet Edwin Markham in 1915 during his travels in Los Angeles when she was attending Manual Arts High School. J.F. Rowny Press published her first volume of poetry, with an introduction by Markham, A Woman Free, in 1917. A pacifist and socialist, Le Prade met her husband Harold Story while protesting World War I in Southern California. They wed in 1919. Le Prade edited the volume Debs and the Poets for Eugene Debs (with an introduction by Upton Sinclair) in 1920. The Poets Garden, which began with the naming of trees already in Le Prade’s backyard for poets, was formally dedicated in 1927 by Markham with the planting of the Song Tree (a sycamore).A second volume of poems, Song Tree, appeared in 1943. Le Prade died 1969 in Los Angeles.
