Esther M. Leiper-Estabrooks

Esther Mather Leiper-Estabrooks died peacefully at home surrounded by family on June 8, 2026.

Esther began writing poetry and prose in 1954 at age eight. Her first piece was about Joan of Arc. It included this couplet: When Joan wanted to go off into battle, She was told to stay home and mind the cattle.

She started a journal, but poems were more intriguing. One Christmas, she received an anthology and discovered verse could be short or long; might rhyme or not. Soon she added poems to her journal. A great gift was her father reporting for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He typed her poems to look professional! Aside from high school, Esther published in college at Virginia Commonwealth University.

College ended, and Esther went home to teach and soon married. When Peter’s job took them to Tennessee, she began grad work at Tennessee Tech University, which she loved. Yet, when just starting, she was asked to become “Poet in the Schools” full-time for the huge rural area of Putnam County, with a generous salary. She accepted, but couldn’t return to her MFA program after the school year since Peter’s corporate job took them to Ohio, then in 1976 to New Hampshire, his (and Robert Frost’s) home state where Esther lived until her death.

Soon she wrote columns for a local newspaper and became poetry editor for The Inkling Magazine which expanded to Writer’s Journal. She also won, plus judged, national poetry contests, despite long hours at our twenty-four-hour-seven-day-a-week country store that she and Peter designed and operated. She often scribbled poem drafts on paper deli plates, and judged poetry contests during store slack-time. She scorned inexact rhymes. She prided herself on choosing exact word pairs, occasionally consulting rhyming dictionaries.

Esther wrote for Writer’s Journal Magazine thirty years, then continued to write at varied venues, and judged contests when asked. Indeed, judging is a way to experience techniques used by others while observing how their efforts might improve. She continued to consult, plus “book doctor” for clients via Peter and her shared business known as Blue Jay Writing Services, together producing her 350-page Win! Poetry Contests book in 2006.

Esther studied forms and techniques for writing flexibility. Once she rescued a poetry text by Donald Hall from the burn pit at our town landfill. She has it still, with a dark scorch mark on the cover. She knew that a certain local library threw out mint-condition books at a local transfer station, which she rescued when she could. She kept many for her library, now in excess of 5,000 books with a capacity for 10,000.

Esther’s first book sold was an epic in rhyme royal, titled The Wars of Faery, serialized in twelve episodes by Amelia Magazine. California artist James Michael Dorsey designed the color cover for the first issue, plus did pen and ink illustrations for following episodes. She became hooked on the relationship of poetry being presented with artwork. More recently, she sold her verse tale Princess Sunrise to the Great North Woods Journal, serialized with her illustrations for sixty weeks. Later, poems and pix were enlarged, three each on twenty story boards, featured at the Teabird Gallery on Main Street in Berlin, NH.

In 2004, she was nominated for the fourth time to the New Hampshire Governor and Executive Council as State Poet Laureate in NH’s five-year cycle. In a subsequent accounting of all of her poems, they were found to number over 12,000 as she continued to grow as a New Hampshire poet-artist. By the end of her life, she had completed over 18,000 poems, with 1,800 of them being prized or published.

Esther is survived by her husband Peter Estabrooks of Gorham; son Thomas Estabrooks also of Gorham; daughter Hannah (Jason) Uhlmann of Three Forks, Montana; three grandsons, and friend Cammie Young. The family would like to thank and honor North Country Home Health & Hospice Agency and Americorps Senior Companion Program for their exceptional and professional service.

In accordance with her wishes, a private service will be held at a later date, with burial at Evans Cemetary. Arrangements are entrusted to the Bryant Funeral Homes & Crematory. Memories and condolences may be shared online at www.bryantcares.com.