Monika: Renée's legal battle was extraordinary. The USTA demanded chromosome testing, she refused, she was
excluded from the 1976 U.S. Open, and eventually the New York Supreme Court ruled in her favor, allowing her to
compete in 1977. When you reconstructed that period, what surprised you most about how much depended on one
person's willingness to refuse the premise that she had to prove she was a woman?
Julie: She could've folded and returned to her successful life as an ophthalmologist. Whether or not she intended to
represent trans people writ large, she gave marginalized communities a lot of hope by seeing her battle through,
despite the scrutiny and attacks.
Monika: Renée then walked onto the court at the 1977 U.S. Open at 43, facing Virginia Wade in the first round,
after an extraordinary year of publicity and legal warfare. When you were writing that match, did you find
yourself thinking less like a historian and more like a sportswriter?
Julie: I think it would've been tempting to walk readers through the match that way, as a sportswriter, but
throughout the process of writing this book, I was very clear with myself that I didn't want it to be a tennis book.
I love tennis books, but the play-by-play of her match with Wade, or any other, was not my focus. My focus was the
history, and my strength as a sportswriter has always been adding context to moments, not re-creating them shot by
shot.
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Photo:
Digital Transgender Archive
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Additional info below. |
Monika: She lost that singles match, but reached the doubles final. Why was it important to you not to treat the
U.S. Open simply as the triumphant ending of the story? What did the actual experience of competing reveal about
Renée that the courtroom victory could not?
Julie: In a certain sense, both for Renée and for her tennis career in particular, the 1977 U.S. Open was the
beginning of the story, not the end. Renée played for five successful years on the Americas portion of the Women's
Tennis Association tour, peaking at No. 20 in the computerized rankings. What Renée's years of competing showed is
another level of her resolve. While run-ins with people who opposed her right to compete weren't super frequent, she
did sometimes have to steel herself through attacks. In one case, an opponent walked off the court rather than
finish a match. Moments like that show Renée's patience and the depth of her love for the game.
Monika: Billie Jean King supported Renée, while others in women's tennis opposed her. Looking through that history
from the perspective of 2026, were you struck more by how progressive some people were in the 1970s, or by how
familiar some of the arguments against Renée still sound today?
Julie: I'm honestly more struck by how progressive some people were in the 1970s! Like I've said, Renée did face
opposition, of course. But the conversation around her right to play was not nearly as hostile and vitriolic as it
is today.
Monika: One of the most difficult aspects of the book is that Renée's historical significance and her present-day
views do not comfortably fit together. The woman who fought successfully for her own right to compete as a woman
now believes that trans women who experienced male puberty should not compete in women's sport. When did you first
realise just how deeply that contradiction would have to become part of the book?
Julie: As soon as she told me the extent of her views, I knew that they had to be a central tension within the book.
Here is this remarkable woman who fought so hard to be afforded the same rights as all other women, and now she
doesn't stand behind her own effort. It's really an extraordinary part of her story.
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| Published in 1983. |
Monika: Your book is called Finding Renée Richards, rather than simply Renée Richards. That word "Finding" feels
significant. By the end of your research, did you feel that you had actually found the Renée you set out to find,
or had you discovered several different Renées, the woman she was, the woman the press created, the woman history
remembers, and the woman she believes herself to be today?
Julie: Something Renée warned me as I embarked on this project is that she arguably has not yet found Renée, so it
would be quite the task for me to attempt. She's such an interesting, complicated person and yes, I do think you
have the right idea, that I have a good understanding of who she has been at various times, through the lenses of
various people, but maybe it's too much to ask for anyone to have one composite portrait of her.
Monika: You have written about athletes whose public identities can obscure their private struggles, first in Mind
Game and now in a very different way in Finding Renée Richards. Is there a connection between those two books for
you, a shared fascination with what happens when the public sees the athlete but fails to see the whole human
being?
Julie: The books might not seem super closely connected on the surface, and the formats are very different as well.
But yes, one area of fascination for me has always been what makes elite athletes both like us and not like us, and
I tried to give readers a window into that unique mentality with both projects.
Monika: After years of interviews, archival research, fact-checking, difficult conversations and wrestling with
your own assumptions, you finally had to let the book go. What was the hardest thing to leave unresolved about
Renée Richards, and is there one question you still wish you could ask her?
Julie: With some regularity, I think of questions I wish I could've asked her before my deadline. As much time as I
was lucky to get with her, of course I'd always wish I had more. Yesterday, I wish I had done deeper digging with
her into how her views on trans women in sports evolved in the years when the culture was not talking much about
this, from the '80s through the late 2010s. Was the issue on her mind all the same in that interval? Or did it fade
and then resurface when politicians made this a wedge issue?
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| Published in 2007. |
Monika: And finally, Julie, fifty years after Renée Richards walked onto the court at the U.S. Open, transgender
athletes are once again at the centre of an extraordinarily heated public debate. If someone reads Finding Renée
Richards without knowing anything about her, what do you most hope they will understand when they close the book,
not about transgender sport in general, but about Renée Richards herself?
Julie: I hope they'll understand that there is no history of transgender people in sports that can be told without
Renée Richards. I hope they understand that she's an icon to many, yes, but she's also just one person, and she's as
interesting and complicated and occasionally as contradictory as the rest of us. But I hope more than anything that
readers agree she's worth knowing and remembering.
Monika: Julie, congratulations on Finding Renée Richards. It is a remarkable book, and I am so happy that you have
brought Renée's story, in all its complexity, to a new generation of readers. Thank you for sharing your time,
your research, and your thoughts with me and with the readers of The Heroines of My Life. I am looking forward not
only to seeing how Finding Renée Richards continues to find its readers, but also to whatever stories you decide
to uncover and bring to life in your next books. I certainly hope this is not the last time we get to talk!
Julie: Thank you so much for your interest in my work and for your thoughtful questions.
END OF PART 2
Main photo: Renée Richards, 1976. Photo by Ben Olender / Los Angeles Times. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Other photos:
NewsHour Productions. "The Robert MacNeil Report: Transexuality and Sports." Motion Picture. 1976. Digital
Transgender Archive.
© 2026 - Monika Kowalska
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Julie is the author of Mind Game: An Inside Look at the Mental Health Playbook of Elite Athletes (2024) and Finding
Renée Richards: The Groundbreaking Story of Tennis's Trans Pioneer (2026). Their work on Renée Richards began with
reporting and a You're Wrong About podcast episode and eventually grew into a full-length biography based on
interviews, archival research and previously unseen material. They have also taught sports journalism at The New
School and are a regular guest on podcasts including You're Wrong About and Hang Up and Listen. Their work
consistently focuses on stories that are often overlooked, particularly where sports, identity, culture and society
intersect.
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