Elizabeth Lorayne '02

In 2014, artist and writer Elizabeth Lorayne had an epiphany. As a young mother with an eighteen-month-old daughter, she had been wondering for some time why there were so few strong heroines in picture books for children.

“I kept asking where are the curious, adventurous girls? Where am I?” recalls Elizabeth from her home in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where she lives with her musician husband Robert Lorayne, and daughter Geneviève (Vivi).

Not long afterward, Elizabeth answered her own question. A character came to her: a young girl – a naturalist – who captained a ship and was named Piratess Tilly. Elizabeth sat down and wrote ten stanzas in Haiku of Tilly’s adventures on the high seas.

“It just came out so naturally,” says Elizabeth. “I read it to Robert and both he and I choked up. He said, ‘Wow, you really have to do something with that.’”

A Character is Born

Elizabeth decided to form her own self-publishing press (White Wave Press) with the goal of creating girl-empowering stories. She then scoured the illustrators from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and discovered Canadian artist Karen Watson. In December 2015, The Adventures of Piratess Tilly, Book 1, was born. It was very different from a typical children’s story: not only was it written in Haiku, its heroine was a curious biologist.

“Piratess Tilly embodied a lot of me,” reveals Elizabeth. “I grew up boating in Seattle, going to the San Juan Islands and exploring the shorelines, shifting rocks to discover crabs, and adventuring through the forests. I loved the outdoors—I even started a neighborhood save-the-earth club called The Pangea Alliance.”

Piratess Tilly captured high praise from reviewers and led Elizabeth into a whirlwind of book readings and community events. In May 2016, the Newburyport Custom House Maritime Museum arranged for Elizabeth to meet the only female captain of a tall ship in the world, Captain Rosario Fernandez Rodriguez. The 16th century Spanish tall ship replica, El Galeón, docked in Newburyport’s harbor, and Elizabeth boarded to meet the captain and present her with a copy of Piratess Tilly.

Because she didn’t feel finished with Piratess Tilly’s adventures, Elizabeth created a second book, The Adventures of Piratess Tilly Easter Island, Book 2, which was released in 2017.

A Melding of Passions

The coming together of science, art, and writing in Elizabeth’s books is in many ways a coming together of herself. As an Upper School student at Northwest, Elizabeth was fascinated by science, especially primatology in Mark Terry’s class. She was equally drawn to writing and reveled in Northwest’s arts classes. Her favorite art experience was a creative expression class with artist and teacher Leah Kosh.

“I’ll never forget we were drawing something and Leah would come over and bump into you, or put glue on your paper, and you’d have to figure out how to incorporate it. Rather than see it as a mistake, I learned to say yes, I can go with this. It was a fantastic life lesson.”

Elizabeth’s passion for primatology led her to defer her acceptance to Lewis and Clark College and head to Durham, North Carolina, where she volunteered at Duke Lemur Center. While there, she applied to Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, and there she became interested in anthropology. But it wasn’t until a Northwest School friend recommended the New School in New York that Elizabeth found her true academic home. She fell in love with the balance of academics and arts that reminded her of Northwest. In 2008, she graduated with a B.S. in Liberal Arts in Psychology and Art, with a minor in Writing.

Looking back, Elizabeth credits Northwest for empowering her to explore many interests, try out new things, and think “outside the box.”

“The academic classes were just fantastic—Latin American Studies, Philosophy, and the writing!” recalls Elizabeth. “I loved that we were required to take two art classes and we learned from working artists. There is no doubt in my mind that it honed me to be where I am now.”

Empowering Girls

In 2018, Elizabeth published a third book designed to inspire girls. This time she focused on women scientists and created a playful approach to learning about them. The Historical Heroines Coloring Book: Pioneering Women in Science from the 18th and 19th Centuries, also published by White Wave Press, celebrates 31 women who passionately pursued their talents in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, often in the face of gender discrimination. Each woman scientist is featured on a double-page spread.

According to Elizabeth, it took some real digging to find the women scientists. “It wasn’t just a Google search; if you do that, you won’t find them,” confirms Elizabeth, who sought the help of a science historian. “It was so much fun to get the information right, to take that information and give it some life. It was very exciting.”

Along with the Piratess Tilly books, Historical Heroines won the Moonbeam Children’s’ Book Award and is finding its way into classrooms. Students at a school in Canada made a world map and located where each woman scientist had lived and worked. Closer to home, a branch of Girls’ Inc. in Lynn, Massachusetts, created a ten-week course based on the book. The students, who were 7th grade girls, read each bio and then did a science project that correlated with that scientist’s work.

“I have had a few people approach me to turn Piratess Tilly into a cartoon series and shop it to Netflix, which could be such fun. I could do an episode on her adventures and include a woman in science,” says Elizabeth. “There are all these things I am so passionate about and Northwest helped me gain the sea legs to explore them all.”