I love writing. Sure, some days the process can be tortuous, unyielding and I get three words on the page, and maybe not even new words, but revised words. Even so, any day I write is a day I have found some joy. Writing feels like a privilege, an opportunity to find story, mystery and meaning inside words and sentences, which emerge from a space inside myself I can only half see.
Every book I’ve written (and these published ones are not all of them, of course, like every writer I have finished manuscripts, which are resting, waiting for their moment) has grown from a seed of intense interest, a desire to sort out my own understanding of the world.
Run Like A Girl 365 Days A Year: A Practical, Personal, Inspirational Guide for Women Athletes
Kathrine Switzer
“We all have a million excuses to skip a daily run, but you only need 365 antidotes to change your life. And here they are, all funny, wise and warm. Lace up, girls!”
Kathrine Switzer, first woman to register and run the Boston Marathon; founder 261 Fearless, and author of Marathon Woman
Christie Pearce Rampone
"I’m at my most competitive level when I am not judging myself negatively. Run Like a Girl motivates, inspires, and celebrates what it means to be a female athlete. It reminds and prepares us to be the best version of ourselves."
Christie Pearce Rampone, former captain of the United States women's national soccer team, 3-time Olympic gold medalist and 2-time FIFA Women's World Cup champion
Christopher Harrison
“As an expressive boy full of joy, my older brother tried to stifle my light. He bullied me by calling me a sissy and saying, “you run like a girl”. In life, hidden in the forces that pull us down is the energy to lift us up. In retaliation, I learned to flip and fly, moving faster than anyone around me. Mina brings new meaning to that phrase with her insightful and masterful book Run Like A Girl 365 Days A Year. Her physical, mental and spiritual journey align with both truth and humility. If running like a girl means pursuing this marathon called life with the same awareness as Mina, then in her writing she gives to all of us a fresh pair of running shoes.”
Christopher Harrison, Founder AntiGravity Inc.
Samantha J. Brennan
*”Mina Samuels' Run Like a Girl 365 Days a Year speaks to the inner athlete in all of us. Both inspirational and practical, this book is a great companion on your athletic journey. Offering bite sized prompts for thought and action, readers will learn, and laugh and grow.”
Samantha J. Brennan, philosopher, co-founder of Fit Is a Feminist Issue and co-author of Fit at Mid-Life: A Feminist Fitness Journey
Nieca Goldberg
“Run Like a Girl 365 Days A Year is a fitness roadmap for women. We are all athletes, there is no judgement and there are no excuses. We just need to move and not look back. Mina Samuels’ inspirational thoughts help keep us moving and feeling good about it.”
Nieca Goldberg MD, Medical Director, Joan Tisch Center for Women's Health, NYU Langone Health
Amy Roe
"It often feels like we’re stealing—from our jobs, families, and responsibilities—when we take time to run. For the larceny of tending to our bodies and souls, Run Like A Girl 365 Days of the Year is an essential accomplice, reminding us daily that the ‘stolen’ moments may be the ones that matter most."
Amy Roe, author of Becoming Boston Strong
Running like a girl is an everyday experience. Running like a girl happens on the road and off. Running like a girl invites us to engage with the world. Running like a girl means challenging our bodies and minds to be stronger and happier, and accessing our ageless girl-spirit, where the clean-slate optimism of “let’s go” meets the seasoned wisdom of “I can.”
When I say running, I mean it as a proxy for any active physical engagement you fancy, however you choose to move your body and get your heart pounding!Also when I say running, I mean it as more than a sport. Sports are just one aspect of how we engage with the world as strong women. We have our work, our communities, our families and our friends; how we are in each of those bits of the world matters.
How does our strength fortify us? How we find balance? How do our sports nourish our life’s purpose? How do they feed our ability to change how we exist in the world? Our sports are a mirror and microscope. They are where we can test our strength and determination and try out new ways of being.
This book is constructed the way our lives are built—day by day, in a series of daily reflections, often unrelated, always accumulating, which slowly knit together to create each of our unique designs.
RADIO INTERVIEW with Robert Sharpe on Bringing Inspiration to Earth
The first time I ran more than 10 kilometers, I shocked myself. What else was I capable of? I opened my eyes and looked around. I became a writer, leaving a career in law behind. Years later, I decided to gather the stories of other women, to tell our collective story about the transformative impact of sports in women’s lives.
Part locker-room confidential, inspiring manifesto and personal memoir, Run Like A Girl is the voices of women sharing how the confidence they built participating in sports—whether it’s running or rock climbing, swimming or yoga—changed their lives in profound ways.
"A sharply observed, intelligent love story that is not only emotionally satisfying, but also psychologically sound."
Photographer
Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Olive Kitteridge
Libby Schmais
"Mina Samuels skillfully weaves fact and fiction to create this engrossing tale of love and sacrifice. A beautifully written story, from the gypsy camps of Russia to New York society at the turn of the century, The Queen of Cups is imaginative and compelling."
Photographer
Libby Schmais, author of The Perfect Elizabeth and The Essential Charlotte
Christina Chiu
"This novel is a heartbreaking example of a woman who gives everything to be loved and accepted, only to be left, in the end, poverty-stricken and desperately alone. Beautifully written, Mina Samuels offers redemption and compassion where it is truly deserved."
Photographer
Christina Chiu, author of Troublemaker and Other Stories
When I read Louis Menand’s, The Metaphysical Club, I was struck by the dismissive manner in which Juliette Peirce was mentioned. She was the mysterious wife of Charles Peirce, a logician and philosopher who should have found a place in the pantheon of great American minds. Yet to this day no one knows her origins or who her family was. She simply appeared in New York and in Charles Peirce’s life. While Juliette has taken much blame for her husband’s failure to fulfill his potential, I saw a different story. The story of a woman who gave everything to support the genius she loved, even as he struggled with painful facial neuralgia, manic depression and increasing drug addiction.
The Queen of Cups is Juliette Peirce’s fictionalized journals. From the gypsy camps of Russia, to glittering Paris and New York, to her final exile to obscurity in the countryside of Pennsylvania, Juliette’s journey traces the life of an independent woman, who, betrayed by those she loves, finds her way forward by forging new identities. Through it all, she never loses her belief in the possibility of redemption, and in the power of love and loyalty.
