About Emily White

I’m a former lawyer who now works as a writer and policy advisor. I came to writing in a slightly haphazard way. All through law school, I longed to be a writer. I told myself that the feeling would go away when I started practicing law, but the reverse happened: the feeling intensified. There was a bookstore across the street from my law firm, and I used to go there during my lunch hour, feeling weak at the knees when I looked at new books. I loved holding them, and feeling how neat and hefty they seemed in my hand. I started writing anywhere, on anything, whenever I could: I have a series of almost illegible notebooks filled out on bumpy bus-rides to work, and I have way, way too many short stories that I wrote in the evenings at my kitchen table.

Somewhere in the midst of all this scribbling, my loneliness became overwhelming, and I realized that I needed to be writing about my own isolation. Once I made the decision to document my loneliness, my life completely changed. I quit my incredibly good job (do you know how much fun it is to say you’re an “environmental protection lawyer”? Everyone smiles and wants to pat you!), and I devoted myself to the full-time study of loneliness. Along the way, I taught law at the college and university level part-time, and also wrote a lot of legal journalism.

I now live in Newfoundland, which is an island on the far, far east coast of Canada. It’s beautiful, but remote. If you’ve ever seen a postcard of a place with craggy cliffs and crashing waves (and whales), that place is probably Newfoundland. I have four cats who are not in the book, because I didn’t want to step into the stereotype of the lonely woman surrounded by too many cats (but it’s true!). I work part-time as an advocate and advisor on issues relating to aging, and I’m at work on my next book.