Hi! My name is Hilary Emerson Lay. I’m an artist, an adventurer, and one of those people generally referred to as a “free spirit”. I love traveling, be it an impromptu afternoon road trip or an epic overseas journey. I change my hair color frequently and have some great tattoos. I’m outgoing and friendly and I love meeting new people. If you google the personality traits of a Sagittarius, you’ll get a perfect description of me: curious, adventurous, optimistic, cheerful, energetic, and independent (also spacey, overextended, and occasionally impatient with the tendency to overthink everything).
I was born and raised on Cape Cod, a peninsula 70 miles south of Boston, Massachusetts. I left to go to college (Emerson College, like my middle name, where I studied Children’s Writing and Illustration) and have lived all sorts of places since then: Western Massachusetts, the North Shore of Boston, Colorado (it was stunning), and two stints in Northern New York along the Canadian border (it was cold–but also beautiful). In 2020, I landed back on the Cape, where I lived with my parents and worked as a landscaper/gardener from 2020-2023.
For seven years I helped run an amazing children’s art camp in Western Massachusetts called Summer Art Barn. In 2019 the camp director (and my close friend) Marion Abrams and I co-wrote a book called Art Sparks, which showcased 53 of our favorite projects from camp. Before I taught at Summer Art Barn, I ran an independent bookstore for ten years.
I’m an avid letter-writer and lover of yard sales, thrift shops, and free stuff on the side of the road. I adore animals and have had side gigs as a pet-sitter for decades. I’m really into coffee; murder mysteries; nutmeg; true crime (well, I’m not “into” true crime; I find it interesting); miniature things; sour beers; taking pictures on my phone and posting them to Instagram; collecting rocks and shells; making people laugh; tiny houses; ranunculus; the woods; hedgehogs; the morning after a really big snow storm; reading about cults; grapes (green or red, whichever is on sale); parties, and making long, absurd lists.
