From the Arkansas Democrat Gazette:

BY MICHELLE PARKS

Sunday, June 5, 2005

FAYETTEVILLE — Melissa King showed up for the interview in a blue, zippered sweatshirt; purple T-shirt; Levi's; and white-striped, blue sneakers, ready to talk about her two passions: basketball and writing.

She's penned her first book, a memoir called She's Got Next: A Story of Getting In, Staying In, and Taking a Shot (Houghton Mifflin, $13), which will be released Thursday. She'll have a book reading and signing that night at the Fayetteville Public Library. Refreshments will be served, and books will be available for purchase.

In the 180-page book, this Conway native describes her experiences and observations while living in Chicago, California and Arkansas. They're told through the framework of basketball, the same window she's long used to view her world.

She learned a lot about herself by writing it, and others will learn a lot about her by reading it.

King fell in love with basketball when she and her younger brother played at their driveway goal post. Their dad is a sports fan and former basketball player.

"I never was very good. I was always small, skinny and about average height," says the 5-foot-5 1/2 brunette. But she was good at distance running in track, for a while holding the two-mile record for AA schools in Arkansas.

During her childhood, King read often and wrote poetry. When she went to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, she first majored in psychology. She switched to English after discovering composition, fiction and poetry classes.

King worked as a copywriter for a fashion retailer and as a waitress in Little Rock. But she thought she'd like to have "an apartment and a car at the same time," so she returned to the university for a business degree. She was writing newsletters and other materials for Cooper Communities in Bella Vista when she left for a marketing job with a natural foods brokerage firm in Chicago. After arriving there in 1994, King continued to keep journals. She found so many new, interesting things, like blues clubs and vegetarian-friendly shops. And, she found neighborhood basketball courts, where she played pickup games with strangers.

She liked the city's diversity and spontaneity. "Anything you want in the city, you can find it," she says. "It's just the human experience everywhere.... It's just so crowded and full and in your face." She recalls how her accent gave her away in stores — they guessed she was from the South or maybe Indiana.

"They just knew I was from somewhere else," she says. King never intended to write any publishable articles or a book. She created vignettes and revised them bit by bit. "I was just writing about what happened to me," she says. "As I would write, I think it got a little more artful."

One of the articles she wrote for "Chicago Reader" was chosen for the 1999 version of The Best American Sports Writing. That's how Sports Illustrated for Women found her.

For that magazine, she wrote an article about why women can't dunk and a profile of WNBA player Lisa Leslie.

King has always run for exercise, but she has to force herself. For her, basketball is more fun and adventurous. And it helped her connect to Chicago.

The street games seemed more authentic to her than those played at centers. She was challenging herself — her athletic and social skills. "You don't know what's going to happen as much," she says. "You were just playing."

She often played at Wicker Park, located in a mixed neighborhood that included professionals and children. She also played in her neighborhood of East Village, which was at the start of revitalization efforts.

In her book, she writes about playing around with some children as she waits for a game to materialize. But the men never seem to invite her in. "The guys just sort of don't look at you," she says. "It's all fairly subtle, but it's real."

More often, though, she found "the people who are there are playing because they love to play," she says. "If you're willing to go do something by yourself, it really is freeing," she says.

King learned how to judge situations and was never really scared. She was once mugged by a woman, the story of which is included in the book.

As she wrote about her experiences, she had to go back later and sort out what it all meant. She finds the deeper meaning in random events. "Once you start thinking about it, it starts showing up in the writing," she says. "To me, it's more honest if you can just let it out and start to think of it as material later."

King never thought of Chicago as a permanent home, and she returned to Arkansas in 1999. She now lives in Fayetteville with her boyfriend, Adam Ritchey, and their 3 1 / 2-year-old son, Jackson.

When King first moved back, playing basketball helped her get over a previous relationship. Then she coached local fourth-grade girls. As she gets older, she says, it takes more effort for her to play basketball.

So she's working on another memoir, this one focused on religion. She hasn't signed a book contract for the work, but her publisher likes what she's done thus far. "I wouldn't call it a long shot," she says. Melissa King's book-signing schedule:

Thursday — 7 p.m.
Fayetteville Public Library
401 W. Mountain Street, Fayetteville

June 14 — 6 p.m.
That Bookstore in Blytheville
316 W. Main, Blytheville

June 15 — 4:30 p.m.
Wordsworth Books
5920 R St., Little Rock

June 16 — 7 p.m.
That Bookstore at Mountebanq Place
1107 Oak St., Conway

June 17 — 11 a.m.
River Market Books & Gifts
Central Arkansas Library System
100 Rock St., Little Rock

July 16 — 2 p.m.
Barnes & Noble
261 N. 46 th St., Rogers.

Web site: www. melissaking. net

Copyright © 2005 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved.