Strong Girl Publishing Company Gives Female Athletes a Chance to Tell Their Stories

October 23, 2023BruceDayne

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When Molly Hurford was in middle school, she described herself as a bookworm and, in her own words – “The least athletic kid in the universe.” Books swayed what she liked; she read The Babysitter’s Club and suddenly wanted to look after kids; she read Nancy Drew and then fancied herself a detective.

But Hurford never found a book that made her want to get into sports as a kid, or even a teenager. It wasn’t until later in life that she got into cycling, then running, then into triathlons. She’s competed in 11 triathlons, her best placement being 17th in the 2015 Skylands Triathlon & Duathlon in Clinton, New Jersey.

In 2019, however, Hurford tackled a new adventure: publishing. Shred Girls is a fiction series about a young girl who tackles the boy-dominated world of BMX biking. The series was exactly what she needed as a young girl, one featuring smart, funny, and witty girls interested in sports.

“There’s such a huge lack of content about young girls in sport,” Hurford says. “And I think books are the best way to get girls who might not be as excited about sports and the outdoors, get interested in them. Because you can really see yourself in books, and as these characters.”

But she found publishing Shred Girls was as easy as getting into sports as a young girl – possible, but not accessible or exactly welcoming. When approaching traditional literary agents and publishing houses, she was told the market for stories about female athletes was too small. A study published in the National Library of Medicine backed up this claim; a survey of 3,280 children’s books (published between 1960 and 2020) aimed at toddlers to teens found that although more books were written by women, 60% of the protagonists were male and 26% were female. Not only that, but books with a male protagonist sell an average of 10 million more copies than novels with female leads.

Molly Hurford taking a break mid-mountain biking. (Photo: Strong Girl Publishing)

“It’s the same reason why we had such limited coverage in women’s sports in the media, why we’re just now getting coverage of the Women’s Tour de France,” she says. A study found that in 1993, women’s sports coverage totaled to be 5%. Compare that to the 2019 total airtime, 5.4%, and it’s clear not much has changed.

“It’s sort of like the chicken-or-the-egg analogy,” Hurford says. “Young girls aren’t as interested in playing sports because they don’t see enough female athletes, but there aren’t enough female athletes because young girls aren’t as interested in remaining in sports.”

Aftering hearing excuses from traditional publishing, Hurford self-published. Shortly after, it was picked up by Rodale Kids, which then got purchased by Random House. Recently, she bought back Shred Girls so she could keep the series under her brand new publishing company, Strong Girl Publishing.

Becoming a Strong Girl

Her experience as a young girl looking for inspiration and role models in books was partly the inspiration for Hurford’s company, Strong Girl Publishing, which started only earlier this year. Its mission has two parts: to help girls see themselves in sport and outdoor adventure by creating stories with strong female characters interested in athletics, and to help female athletes who are looking to publish their stories as books.

“When I put my Shred Girl series out, a lot of young athletes were asking me how the book publishing process worked, and how they could do it,” Hurford. “I didn’t have great answers for them, because traditional publishing, as it turns out, isn’t super interested in books about young female athletes. And self publishing is a lot of work and very labor-intensive. So I wanted to create a middle-space between traditional and self publishing where these young women would have an outlet.”

Hurford guides female athletes through the publishing process, from conception to editing to marketing to printing. Strong Girl is a new company, so it currently only has three authors under its publication right now. But the list is ever-expanding, and Hurford hopes to give every writer that comes to her a voice. One of those writers is cyclist and poet Mackenzie Myatt.

Mackenzie Myatt

A study conducted by Women in Sport reports that by age 14, girls drop out of sports at two times the rate of boys due to many different reasons, the most common being: lack of resources, social stigma, and body image issues. For Mackenzie Myatt, this isn’t just a statistic, it’s reality.

Growing up, Myatt was a competitive gymnast, though she also enjoyed mountain biking with her father and brother. She says staying in gymnastics was easy, as it was a sport that was so involved and social. However, mountain biking wasn’t – and that was clear when, during the transition from junior high to high school, her local biking club numbers dwindled to nothing.

“That was really difficult, because I had a few good friends in that group,” Myatt says. “After that, the only thing that kept me cycling was the fact that I had retired from gymnastics and was, for the first time, cycling throughout the whole year. I’d never done that before.”

In 2015, Myatt placed third at the Women’s Junior’s Canadian MTB XC Championships, and she’s continued to perform over the years. Most recently, in 2023, Myratt placed third in the Women’s Elite Dieppe Canada Cup XCO + UCI Junior Series.

Beyond cycling, Myatt is a poet. She’s always written her feelings, but never considered publishing until she met Hurford, who encouraged her to take her writing to the next level.

“I’ve always used writing to help me process my emotions and changes in my life,” Myatt says. “I’d written a lot of poetry as a teenager, but later in life, I had this massive shift in my perspective of the sport and the progression of joy and how I wanted to live my life.”

She tried, for several years, to get her poetry published, but nothing ever stuck. Her poetry, it seems, belongs with Strong Girl Publishing’s mission.

“I think it’s hugely important to have role models who talk about their experiences, and growing up, I never knew any female athlete who wrote poetry,” Myatt says. “I didn’t even think it was an option. But now, I think someone could, because I did it. And writing or even just reading it could help them a lot, in their life and sport.”

Myatt’s book, In Defense Of Big Dreams, is out now.