Edythe Squier Draper was born of missionary parents on July 25, 1882, in Hakodate, Japan. When she was five, her family moved from Japan to Ohio, then later to Minnesota. As the eldest of nine children (only seven survived to adulthood), the young Edythe had many responsibilities, often having to wash clothes and dishes and care for her siblings. Her childhood was not easy. Edythe often felt like an outsider, as the family moved constantly.

By the time Edythe graduated from high school she had lived in Browns Valley, Crookston and Sauk Centre, Minnesota; Steubenville and Westerville, Ohio; Asbury Park, New Jersey; and Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

After teaching at a mission school for blacks in South Carolina, attending the University of Pennsylvania for a time, and teaching high school in Ohio, Edythe Squier Draper came to Oswego, Kansas, in 1910 to join the faculty of the Oswego College for Young Ladies. She stayed in Kansas the rest of her life. In 1912, she married James B. Draper, whom she described as "the Man Across the Street," then had three children and began to write. Between 1924 and 1942 she published over two dozen stories, around 60 children's stories, and newspaper fictional short stories. Her best short story, "The Voice of the Turtle," was reprinted in Edward J. O'Brien's The Best Short Stories of 1930. In 1942, when almost sixty years old, she became the Oswego correspondent to the Parsons Sun. She wrote a daily column for the Parsons, Kansas, newspaper until her death at age 82 on September 25, 1964.

Listing 1 story.