R. R. Knudson, an author whose stories about girls and women in sports, particularly her series of “Zan” novels, heralded the lowering of gender barriers on the playing field, died on May 3 at her home in St. Petersburg, Fla. She was 75 and also lived in Sea Cliff, N.Y.
The cause was cancer, her partner, Carole Berglie, said.
Ms. Knudson wrote more than 40 books. But she is best known, particularly among teenage girls, for the four “Zan” books. Published in the years after the passage of Title IX, the 1972 law that prohibited federal funding for education programs that discriminate on the basis of sex, including sports, the series called on young women to eschew cheerleader skirts and pompoms. Its central character, Suzanne Hagen, nicknamed Zan, is a fun-loving all-around athlete.
The first in the series, “Zanballer” (Delacorte, 1972), was based on Ms. Knudson’s own experience as a high school girl in Alexandria, Va. She had spent the summer of 1946 honing her basketball skills. But just as the basketball season was about to begin, the school gymnasium floor was torn up because it had warped. The boys’ team was bused to practice at a local Y.M.C.A. All that was left for the girls was a dance class.
“I organized the girls to leave class and play football” on the only other available field, Ms. Knudson told The New York Times in 1985.
“Zanbanger” (Harper, 1977) is about a girl who does get to play basketball, and “Zanboomer” (Harper, 1978), is about a girl who runs track. The last book in the series, “Zan Hagen’s Marathon” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1984), recounts the fictional character’s competition with real-life athletes like Joan Benoit and Grete Waitz in the women’s marathon at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984— the first women’s marathon in the 88-year history of the modern games. In the book Zan wins; in reality, Ms. Benoit took the gold.
In a review of “Zan Hagen’s Marathon,” The Times said of Ms. Knudson, “She’s never balked at depicting in females what used to be prejudged beyond their capabilities and even outside their rights.” Ms. Knudson’s 1974 book, “Fox Running” (Avon), is about an Apache girl who runs a sub-four-minute mile at the Olympics.
Rozanne Ruth Knudson was born in Washington on June 1, 1932, one of six children of James and Ruth Ellsworth Knudson.
Besides Ms. Berglie, she is survived by two sisters, Alice Mergler of Manassas, Va., and Melanie Wall of Falls Church, Va.; and two brothers, Homer, also of Falls Church, and Ellsworth, of Dickerson, Md.
Ms. Knudson graduated from Brigham Young University in 1954 and received a master’s degree at the University of Georgia in 1955. After teaching English at high schools in Miami and Key West, Fla., she received a Ph.D. from Stanford in 1967. She later taught English at Purdue, Adelphi and York College of the City University of New York.
It was at York that Ms. Knudson’s writing career began. She had assembled an anthology of sports poetry in an effort to spark the interest of her students. When she suggested to an editor that she put together another collection, she was told: “No, I want you to write me a sports novel. There aren’t any women writing about women athletes.”
Ms. Knudson, who played baseball, tennis and football as a young
woman, was a jogger well into her 60s.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company