Born in New York City, poet and musician Grace Hazard earned a BL at Smith College and taught at the Graham School in New York before moving to Europe to continue her musical studies. In France, she studied the organ with Charles-Marie Widor before illness caused her to return to the United States. In 1905 she married Roscoe Platt Conkling, and the couple moved to a ranch in Mexico. After their separation in 1914, she joined the Smith College faculty, teaching there until her retirement in 1947. During her lifetime, Conkling published numerous collections of poetry, including Afternoons of April (1915), Wilderness Songs (1920), Ships Log and Other Poems (1924), Flying Fish: A Book of Songs and Sonnets (1926), and Witch and Other Poems (1928). In addition to poetry, Conkling also wrote essays, including the monograph “Imagination and Children's Reading” (1921). She also transcribed her daughter Hilda’s early childhood poems, which were published as the collection Poems by a Little Girl (1920).
 
Smith College awards a poetry residency in her name, and a selection of her papers is housed in the archives of their library.