Hi! I’m artist Emily Louise Howard and I’m the hands, head and heart behind The Diggingest Girl, a printmaking + illustration + crafts studio outside of Nashville, TN.

Identifying as an artist from the tender age of seven, I was lucky to spend a childhood indulging in every creative whim that crossed my mind: drawing comic strips, building construction paper castles, running a palm-sized newspaper for dogs, and turning notebooks into novellas about ghosts and magic apples. My parents put me in after-school art programs and summer camps, attended every show, and kept me rich in paper and pencils. Thanks, Mom and Dad!!!

The joy of creation was (and is!) a pillar of my life, so I always knew art was my path. I studied fine art at the University of Kentucky, receiving a B.F.A. in painting in 2006. I achieved an M.F.A. from the University of Cincinnati in 2010, combining printmaking, painting and sculpture with immersive storytelling for my master’s thesis exhibition. In 2012 I also completed a Master of Art Education with K-12 licensure, afterwards spending several years teaching in Kentucky public schools. In 2019, I became an author for the first time upon the publication of my instructional printmaking book Block Print Magic (Quarto). In 2025, I became a published illustrator with the release of Robert Philip’s A Little History of Music (Yale University Press).

These days I live in a little house in the suburbs of the big city, running my one-woman artmaking operation and small YouTube channel out of my home studio with my cat, Selu, and the occasional helping hand from my better half, David.