Molly Brodak, a poet who chronicled the trauma she experienced as the child of a compulsive liar and bank robber in a critically acclaimed memoir, died on March 8 near her home in Atlanta. She was 39.

Her husband, Blake Butler, said the cause was suicide and that Ms. Brodak had a history of depression dating to childhood.

Before Ms. Brodak published “Bandit: A Daughter’s Memoir” in 2016, her poems appeared in publications like Granta, Guernica and Poetry and in a book, “A Little Middle of the Night” (2010), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize.

Many of her poems were spare and mysterious. One of them, “In the Morning, Before Anything Bad Happens,” reads in part:

I know there is a river somewhere,

lit, fragrant, golden mist, all that,

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whose irrepressible birds

can’t believe their luck this morning