00:00My book is structured as a tournament with eight main characters and every section that looks like a chapter is
00:08in fact a fight, a face-off between two young women, two of the eight main characters in the book.
00:15It's not a book about domination. I think it's a book about wanting to be seen at a time when
00:23you felt otherwise invisible. I wanted to be clear that I think that the eight main characters who are competing
00:28against each other, they are much more comrades than they are adversaries.
00:32The reason why I chose the world of boxing as the setting for my novel is because I think that
00:39boxing looks like two people talking. The boxing ring itself is elevated like a stage. These girls, they compete in
00:48this tournament. They want to have control over something and what they've chosen to have control over is their ability
00:55to use their physical bodies for sport.
00:58I was not a boxer but I was a competitive youth athlete. I was a water polo player. I competed
01:05in the Junior Olympics seven times and I was very interested in the mental space of the tournament as you're
01:11like leaving behind the rest of your life in order to put everything you have into competing for this one
01:17thing and that feeling is really addictive.
01:20I think this is, it's certainly a book about existing in a female body but it's also a book about
01:25the difficulties of existing.
01:26Something that I would hope this book gave to my daughter or to any reader are the pleasures of obsessiveness
01:34and how wonderful of a thing that can be.
