Alumni Couple Writes and Illustrates Children’s Book

Main character is a hockey player who had great hair

Sacred Heart University alumni Konn and Emily Hawkes have published their first children’s book, Flowman and the Magic Mullet, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and at a number of other retailers.

Their inspiration for the book is a Canadian recreational hockey player named Greg Lowman, whom Konn met when he worked for the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C. Lowman’s nickname was “The Hair” and, Konn said, “He did have the best hockey hair ever.” The hockey player also has a line of hair products called Hockey Hair that he co-founded with his teammates, Jamie Allard and Rich Dizinno.

After the Hawkeses left the U.S. to return to Canada and the family’s farm, Konn thought of working with Emily, a talented artist, on a children’s book. The story would be about fictional hockey player “Greg Flowman” and his “magic hockey hair.” 

The couple spent about two years on the book. “Because it was sort of a prank (on Lowman), we didn’t rush it,” said Emily. She illustrated the book and wrote most of the story, with Konn contributing his hockey knowledge and the “flow”—or hair—vocabulary. 

The book has gained notoriety in the Watrous, Saskatchewan area of Canada, where the Hawkeses live. Children at a day-care center there insist that their teacher read it to them every day. The Hawkeses also visit local schools for readings of Flowman and the Magic Mullet. “I’ll be honest, I was surprised at how excited the kids are about the book,” said Konn.

Greg Lowman, the inspiration for Flowman, loved the book, and featured it on his hair company’s Instagram account, he said. 

Hockey played a significant role in the Hawkeses relationship, even before they produced their book. Konn played hockey in high school and was recruited to play for Sacred Heart in 1999. A knee injury caused him to delay his participation for a season in his sophomore year, so while other team members were practicing at the Milford Ice Pavilion, Hawkes was seeing a trainer for physical therapy. Emily Hawkes had a work-study job at the rink, and that’s where they met. “It probably took about two more years before we finally connected,” said Konn. “But it was because of my knee and hockey—that was the beginning.

“I remember when I was a freshman, the [University] president made a speech, and he said that we were going to do a few things while we were there. He said that the most important thing that we were going to do was fall in love.” Konn said he thought that was the corniest thing he had ever heard, but that’s exactly what happened.

Konn majored in finance and business administration, which brought him to work in culture and outreach for the Canadian Embassy after he graduated from SHU. Eight years later, he began to miss his family’s farm in Saskatchewan. Today he has fulfilled his childhood dream of being a farmer on that same 6,500-acre family grain farm, where he grows a variety of wheat, canola and lentils. 

Emily Hawkes, a Walpole, NH, native was a member of the SHU rowing team. She majored in psychology and worked her way up to director of administration at a think tank in Washington, D.C., called the Bipartisan Policy Center. She fully supported the move up to Canada and life on the farm. “I think that we were both ready to get out of D.C.,” she said. She now tends to her own honeybee apiary and sells a line of honey and beeswax materials locally.

The couple has two more children’s books in development. The first will feature another character from Flowman. The second is based on the true story of a cow that broke loose in Watrous, Saskatchewan, Canada and wreaked havoc on the whole town for an afternoon. “People were told to shelter in place; they couldn’t let the elementary school kids go home,” explained Emily. It turned out that the cow merely wanted to go home from the veterinary clinic where it was being treated.

“We have preorders from half the town already for that book,” she said.