Hilary Norcliffe was born in Bristol, England in 1970 and grew up in Ontario, Canada, interspersed with years abroad in Kenya, England and France. She completed a BA in Psychology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and then danced off to Los Angeles, California, where she solidified her love of the arts. She completed her MFA in Visual Art in 2002 at California State University Long Beach, where she has taught for over 20 years. She canoodles on the piano, putters about the garden, patches up her old house, takes the odd improv class and loves her creative daughter to the moon and back.