A Maine native, raised in Biddeford, with an innate passion for stories, Emma Bouthillette started writing at a young age. At first she created imaginary tales with crayons. By kindergarten she upgraded to using an old typewriter. When her dad bought a word processor for his business, she commandeered it for her stories.

Through grade school, high school, and college, she pursued writing. Emma earned her Bachelor of Arts in English literature from the University of New England in 2008, with a semester during her senior year spent at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. After a year writing for local weeklies, she began working at the Portland Press Herald and enrolled in University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program, obtaining her Master of Fine Arts in creative non-fiction writing in 2012. She published her first book, A Brief History of Biddeford, in 2017. Since 2018, she has worked for a national environmental engineering firm as a content marketing specialist.

Emma is currently writing her next book, a coming of body memoir that explores her chronic conditions as a result of a benign brain tumor and realizing her own radical self acceptance in the context of the body positive movement. In the book, she comes to a better understanding of how the tumor affected her physiologically and psychologically with honesty and wit. As she progresses towards a complete manuscript, Emma is seeking agent representation for publishing the book.

While never an athletic type, Emma fell in love with yoga after discovering Samudra Studio. Wanting to know more about the mind-body connection, she completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training through the Fluid Yoga School at Samudra Studio. What began as a personal quest has turned into a passion for sharing the practice. In June 2020, she became a Yoga for All certified instructor and offers classes accessible to all bodies.

If you don’t catch her on a yoga mat or with pen to paper, you can probably find Emma with her corgis Savvy and Glinda, supporting local businesses, or breathing in the salty air on Fortunes Rocks Beach.