Growing up on the Vineyard, Emma Lovewell was encouraged by her father to be a writer. The daughter of Mark Alan Lovewell, a journalist and photographer for the Vineyard Gazette, she found the newsroom to be like a second home.
But she was not interested in that career path, feeling that writing seemed too much like homework.
Years later, though, Ms. Lovewell finally embraced her father’s advice. Her book Live Learn Love Well: Lessons From a Life of Progress Not Perfection will be released on May 2 and details her childhood on the Vineyard and career as a leading instructor for the stationary bike company Peloton.
“It kind of started with me writing down all of these big stories and events that happened in my life,” Ms. Lovewell said. “Then I started jotting down all of the phrases and little anecdotes that I tell in my fitness classes... It was a bit like doing a crossword puzzle, just trying to figure out how and why I’m telling these stories.”
Despite also being an accomplished fitness model, dancer and Super Bowl ad-featured personal trainer, Ms. Lovewell wasn’t confident that she had lived a life deserving of a memoir when an editor from Ballantine Books approached her two years ago. She had dabbled in writing on her blog Live Learn Lovewell, but writing a full-length book would be a new feat.
“It’s hard to write a memoir-esque book when I’m in the middle of my life,” she said. “It’s not in the order of my life and is all very random. That was an active choice that I had to make.”
When she encountered writing blocks and needed an extra pair of eyes, she often sought the advice of her father. The two worked together even when Ms. Lovewell wrote about emotional moments from her parents’ divorce.
“I would call my dad and be like ‘I think I need you to read some of this,” she said. “I wanted to involve my family because this is not just about me, it’s bigger than me... Luckily, he’s such an advocate of me being a writer that he’s like ‘I want you to be honest and feel like you can write whatever you want to write.”
In the book, Ms. Lovewell also discusses feeling out of place on the Vineyard as the daughter of a Taiwanese mother and white father, and said that much of the writing process was therapeutic for her relationship with her family and the Island.
“It was healing for me in a way to go through and hash out all of these family life events,” she said. “I looked forward to Friday afternoons, usually, because that was the time that I could dedicate to sitting down to just write and figure it all out.”
She also writes about her rise to fame when Peloton bikes dominated the at-home exercise scene during the Covid pandemic. She credits the Edgartown School lip sync contest and her Island dance and sports training for giving her the initial confidence to pursue a career in fitness and performance.
As in her Peloton cycling classes, Ms. Lovewell shares several health and wellness tips throughout the book, with hopes that readers will feel uplifted and inspired.
“People have told me that I’ve helped them get through the pandemic,” she said. “I would love for people to feel a similar way after reading my book.”
Ms. Lovewell is now a full-time New Yorker and frequent world traveler, but visits the Island as much as she can to see friends and family.
“[The Island] was the best place,” she said. “It was so safe and beautiful and I just felt really supported by my small community.”
Ms. Lovewell returns to the Vineyard on July 25 to discuss her book and career as a part of the Martha’s Vineyard Concert Series.
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