Emily and the Mighty Om - Hardcover

Sarah Lolley grew up in rural Ontario, weaned on stories of her parents’ backpacking adventures in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South Asia in the early 1970. She hoisted a backpack of her own once she completed her undergraduate studies at Queen’s University and the University of Edinburgh and since then, has traveled through 34 countries on five continents, and spent time living in France, Jamaica, Scotland, and Australia.

Sarah works as a freelance writer, specializing in medical education (her undergraduate research was published in the Journal of Neuroscience and she holds a Master's in Biomedical Ethics from McGill University) and also writes creatively. Her witty and insightful personal essays, her travel stories, and her feature articles have appeared in ELLE Canada magazine, The Globe and Mail, up! magazine, the Toronto Star, Canadian Living, the Montreal Gazette, Destinations magazine, and Doctor's Review. She is also the author of numerous short stories for adults. Her story “Fifteen More Minutes” was a finalist in the 2006 CBC Quebec Short Story Competition and was anthologized in the collection In Other Words, and her story "3:28 p.m. on Saturday at the Bar on the Corner" was a finalist for the 2009 CBC Literary Awards.

Sarah is perfectly bilingual in English and French, and speaks fluent Spanish. She calls Montreal home.

In the summer, someone new moved in next door to Emily. His hair was gray and his face was wrinkled but his eyes always seemed to sparkle. His name was Albert, and he was very, very old.

Every afternoon, Albert twisted his body into all kinds of strange positions on a mat on her front lawn. 

“It’s called ‘yoga,’” he told Emily, who watched from her front porch.

When he finished, Albert sat with his legs crossed and chanted a single word: “om.”