An interview with Emylia Hall, best-selling author, snowboarder and skater.

One of my favourite things about board sports is the people you meet, but I hadn’t realised when I started this community that it would lead me back to someone I was friends with 15 years ago.

Emylia was then ‘Mimi’, the very cool girlfriend of the best friend of my boyfriend at the time, an effortless snowboarder cruising down the mountain as I struggled to deal with the flat spots on the mountain.

Fast forward to now, and reading an article in The Guardian written by Emylia Hall, author of the best-selling Cornwall based mystery series ‘The Shellhouse Detectives’, talking about the power of taking up skateboarding in your 40’s, and I realise they are one and the same person:

“As a “later skater”, what I’ve come to realise is that everything seems impossible until you try it. Every minuscule achievement, every incremental progression, feels epic, and each experience hard-won. There’s a lesson in that.” - Emylia Hall, The Guardian, June 2024

Emylia is on a strict writing schedule, having been commissioned for 7 books in the series she is writing, and skating provides a much needed escape for her brain. We haven’t written much on Board Women about the connection between skateboarding and creativity, but they are clearly intertwined.

“A lot of writing is about trying stuff and just exploring different avenues, trying different things with characters, trying things with plot, seeing what happens and when it doesn’t work, just rewriting and rewriting. I’m having to find a new way of working, and I’ve got a new routine because of that. But what that means is desk time is really intense, and so I really cherish the time that I get away from the desk, and skateboarding is absolutely my release.”

Board Sports provide that elusive escape for your brain that so many of us crave in mid life. The life jenga that we deal with on a daily basis (Mimi has a son, coaches other writers, and also runs an organisation called The Mother Ship, encouraging mothers to be writers) needs an outlet, and board sports hit the spot in a way that no other sports can.

This interview is a true ode to the wonder of skateboarding, its relationship to the creative process, and what it is to accept the status of being a beginner again in your 40’s. We cover:

• Emylia’s journey into snowboarding, and several seasons on the mountain

• Lockdown and skateboarding and being an ‘unlikely skateboarder’

• The uphill learning curve of being a beginner (and how amazing it is)

• Starting The Mothership and getting mums to believe in themselves

• Her skateboarding future & what success means now

It’s a warm, inviting hug of an interview, I hope you love this one.

Host: Caroline Keylock

Producer: Selma Chalabi

https://weareboardwomen.substack.com/

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