Celia (Tsilye) Dropkin (1887- 1956) was best known as a poet whose work addressed sexual and erotic themes with a frankness that shocked readers and critics. In the 1930s she turned to prose, publishing Desires, her only novel, in sixty-eight installments in the Jewish Daily Forward, or Forverts. Like her poetry, Desires reflects on the internal and external conflicts of love, domesticity, and sexuality, as well as the competing impulses that are part of every life.