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 and is a full time content marketing specialist for an environmental engineering firm based in Portland, Maine.

As a result of surgery to remove a benign brain tumor when she was just five-years-old, Emma suffers from minor brain damage requiring a regiment of hormone replacement. As a result, she struggles with a lack of peripheral vision and excess weight. After the majority of her teens and twenties spent hating her body, abiding to various diets and countless hours in a gym, she shifted her perspective. Emma celebrated her thirtieth birthday on a tropical beach wearing a bikini, and not because she finally reached her goal weight, but because she learned to love her body just the way it is.

In another radical shift of perception, Emma walked into a yoga studio in March 2017 seeking to nurture her mind, body and spirit. It was love at first OM. In April 2018, she finalized her 200-hour yoga teacher training through the Fluid Yoga School hosted at Samudra Studio. In June 2020, she became a Yoga for All certified instructor.

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