Aralyn Hughes

For over 33 years Aralyn has been an icon in Austin helping to keep the city as bright, colorful, and unique as she is. You may have seen Aralyn driving her bright pink pig-themed art car around town with her pet pot bellied pig in tow or witnessed in giant letters, "Keep Austin Weird," on the side of her house just off of Enfield and MoPac. Aralyn has appeared on numerous television shows on the local and national level as an ambassador of what makes Austin such a great place to live. Aralyn is one of Austin's favorite "Keep Austin Weird" characters, featured on HGTV, Discovery Channel, both national and local CBS networks, various radio stations, and local venues like Zachary Scott Theater. She is co-author of In The West, one of the longest running monologue shows in Austin, which also played the Kennedy Center and was later adapted into the movie Deep In The Heart. Aralyn became a performance artist, storyteller and non fiction monologist in her sixties. She performed eight original pieces in her series "Aralyn's Home Economics" and has performed at the International Solo Theater Fetival (2013) and Winnipeg Fringe Festival (2016). Aralyn's book "Kid Me Not; an anthology about child-free women who came of age in the 1960s" features stories of women who made the decision to not have children. They were the first generation of women to have truly had a choice, due to the advent of the birth control pill. With a Foreward by Elizabeth Gilbert ("Eat, Pray, Love") it has won a Texas Author's Book Award in 2015. The rights have been published by Korea and China.