Celia Dropkin (Yiddish name Zipporah Levine,[1] and later Tsilye Drapkin), was born in Bobruysk, Russian Empire to an assimilated Russian-Jewish family.

[4] For many years she was a regular contributor to a wide variety of journals; she also wrote stories and a serialized novel[5] to earn money, but was more interested in poetry.

She did, in common with the Inzikhistn, employ free verse much of the time; and she believed any subject matter was appropriate for Yiddish poetry, not only specifically Jewish ones.

She was a close friend of poet Zishe Landau [he], one of the founders of the slightly earlier, rival group, Di Yunge.

"Dropkin's stature in Yiddish literature is groundbreaking in its candor about sex, love, death and relationships between men and women.

"[9] The last poem published in her lifetime was the 1953 "Fun Ergets Ruft a Fayfl" (From Somewhere a Whistle Calls), an ode to her long-dead friend Zishe Landau, which appeared in Di Tsukunft.

[10] Her children published an expanded edition of In Heysn Vint in 1959, which includes previously uncollected poems, a selection of her stories, and paintings.

A book of translations into French was published in Paris in 1994 as Dans le Vent Chaud, and contains about half her total work.