Diane Ayres is a fiction writer, poet, illustrator, and editor.

An alumna of Chatham College in Pittsburgh, Ayres graduated with English honors and the Beatrice Lewis Memorial Book Award for creative writing. She became a contributing editor at Pittsburgh magazine, and then was also offered the unique opportunity to become the assistant project director for a touring exhibition of priceless Elizabethan manuscripts from the Folger Shakespeare Library, which was installed at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 1980. The city-wide event was such a success that she and the project’s director were nominated together for Pittsburgh’s Man of the Year Award in the Arts.

When the Shakespeare exhibit moved on, Ayres began writing fiction and editing full time, and every few years taking on a freelance project. In 1983, she was hired by the producers at WQED Pittsburgh Public Broadcasting to research the pilot for the award-winning PBS documentary series, “Conserving America.” In 1985, Ayres moved to Philadelphia where she continued to write and take on special projects and “odd jobs,” such as posing as a studio artist’s model or shoveling top soil for her sister’s landscaping business. She also worked as a research assistant in the department of oncology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, interviewing the parents of children with brain tumors for a group of Johns Hopkins epidemiologists creating the country’s first brain tumor registry.

She also took on freelance work as a researcher and editorial consultant for writers of magazine articles and non-fiction books. And she taught. For many years, Ayres was an instructor of high school students at the annual Young Writer’s Conference at the University of Pennsylvania. Her wildly popular workshop, “Fiction Addiction,” was later expanded into a six-week course at Penn’s summer academy.