[8][1] Hayes lists Joan Didion, Diane Arbus, and Susan Sontag as literary influences.

[11] Twenty-four of these were displayed in the Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea, Manhattan (which represents Hayes) from February 15 to March 17, 2018.

[8][9] His mother Jean was an artist; his father John a military man who had lost an eye as a paratrooper in the Korean War.

[9] When Bill was three, the family moved to Spokane, Washington, where his father bought a Coca-Cola bottling plant.

[9] Hayes was close with his maternal grandmother, Helen, from the age of eleven until he left home for college.

[9] Hayes knew he was gay at a young age,[8] though he had relationships with women in high school and college.

[6] In 2009, Hayes moved to New York City, where he had a relationship with neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, until the latter's death in 2015.

Hayes' experiences in New York and his six-year relationship with Sacks are the subject of his book Insomniac City.