"The Boxer's Heart: How I Fell in Love with the Ring" by Kate Sekules.
"I fought to shake things up, to play with the world. If I--sometime bookworm, singer in a band, Londoner, magazine editor, fiction writer, hotel and restaurant critic, softball addict, Caucasian of mixed heritage, pony-mad child, expatriate--could become a convincing pugilist, then anything under the sun is possible."
So says Kate Sekules, the author of this brilliantly candid memoir and first-ever guide to the world of women's boxing. The story of how an averagely talented athlete converted her visceral dislike of violence into a short but eventful career as a professional boxer makes irresistible reading for both fans and foes of what used to be "The Manly Art."
Sekules, the travel editor at Food and Wine , took a boxercise aerobics class in Brooklyn in the mid-nineties and, before long, was a regular at Gleason's, America's oldest continuously operating fight gym, where she trained alongside the famous, the infamous, the hopeless, and the helpless. Initially, boxing was a way for Sekules to explore the glorious grit of the gym and to show off to her literary friends ("I hang out with real boxers").
New book. First edition 2000.
Hardcover with dust jacket