Ms. Ayres grew up on Bog Hollow Road in the house her paternal grandparents purchased as a summer residence in the early 1920s. They became close friends with Rex Brasher, who in those years was working on his monumental Birds and Trees of North America. Ms. Ayres’s father, at age twelve, became Rex’s first subscriber. When Ms. Ayres returned to Chickadee Valley in 2005, she became a founding member of the Rex Brasher Association in 2008, dedicated to restoring Rex’s reputation as the greatest North American painter of birds.
After graduating from Kenyon College with a B.A. in History, Ms. Ayres completed an apprenticeship in historical editing and worked for more than a decade as a book editor at the Institute of Early American History in Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia. In 1992, she completed a degree in social work, which led her to a career focused on social justice issues and the representation of individuals facing serious criminal charges. Ms. Ayres retired from the Connecticut Office of the Chief Public Defender in 2019, which has allowed her to focus her interests in publishing and research on the RBA.