Ranken is the daughter of John Logan Campbell Ranken from Scotland, who ran a stock and station agency in Sydney, and his wife Alice Catherine Ranken. Her uncle is the surveyor, public servant and writer George Ranken (q.v.). In 1935 Ranken participated in Australian Authors Week in Sydney. She was a member of the Pageant Committee, co-directed the pageants and wrote a poem, '1. The Prologue' to be spoken during the pageant. In 1939 she was made a member of the Order of the British Empire.
The Oxford Book of Australian Women's Verse (ed. Susan Lever, 1995): 244 asserts that Ranken published five books of poetry during the 1910s. Dream Horses and Other Verses (1912) is the only volume of verse listed by Serle's A Bibliography of Australasian Poetry and Verse : Australia and New Zealand (1925): 165 and E.Morris Miller's Australian Literature From its Beginnings to 1935 (1940): 307. No other volume has been identified or located.
