Since Rea Frey moved to Chicago four years ago to attend Columbia College, the 22-year-old Nashville native has taken up boxing, undergone brain surgery, gotten married, been named valedictorian of her graduating class, and written her first novel, A Woman’s Ring, which will be published this summer by Dare2Dream Publishing, a small South Carolina press specializing in poetry and fiction by and about women. She lives with her husband and two cats in a spotless high-rise apartment a few blocks from Michigan Avenue.
RF: Basically it’s about a young mother who abandons her children to become a boxer. She learns the sport well but loses her first fight. Then she starts developing headaches and realizes that she’s going to have to get brain surgery–I wanted to throw that in there because I went through it and I wanted to share that. It’s just about the choices she makes. They’re not the right choices, but they’re the right choices for her. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of hate letters from mothers, because this woman abandons her children. I like writing about things that aren’t really supposed to happen.
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TM: When was that?
RF: I kind of had the idea a few years ago, but it began as more of a memoir and I wanted it to be fiction. Not until last year did I come up with the story. I wrote the bulk of it in about four or five months, though I had some of the boxing parts from a few years ago.
TM: What else do you do besides write and box?
