Welcome.
Rough Notes is a publication chronicling women’s basketball & its evolutions from the court, the road and the heart. I started Rough Notes because I want to create new, rule-breaking ways of writing about women’s basketball that don’t need to emulate anybody else.
Below is the story of how it all got started. Scroll all the way down to read reviews of Rough Notes from other sportswriters, journalists, artists & women’s basketball fans.
The Story of Rough Notes
I started Rough Notes in the summer of 2024 while covering the Chicago Sky and feeling like a total misfit in press row. What if I stopped trying to think differently? I finally asked myself. What if I let myself write, as me?
So instead of writing into a traditional format, I started publishing my “rough notes” from the games, collected as bullet points and blurring the edges of sportswriting. I included my own thoughts, confessions and imaginings. I pulled in historical research, sociology, and cultural criticism. And I broke perhaps a few too many rules along the way.
It was the first time I allowed myself to cover women’s basketball with more authenticity and less fear.
And it felt really, really good.
Now Rough Notes is a publication following the guts & glory of women's basketball from the court, the road and the heart.
When you subscribe to Rough Notes, you’ll receive regular new posts (each a kind of jagged, longform essay), containing unequal parts memoir, sociological investigation, and narrative reporting. Together, we’ll travel to women's basketball games across the country, deep dive into ignored histories of the sport, turn strangers into new friends, and grapple with our own becoming.
The thing that fascinates me most about basketball is that it has constantly changed and continues to do so. Which means this sport has the power to transform all of us: emotionally, culturally, politically, and in big mysterious ways we may not even know. My goal is not only to share stories about women’s basketball with you, but to make you feel like part of them. Because you are.
Thank you to everyone already supporting Rough Notes, and if you haven’t already, I hope you’ll subscribe!
Yours,
Maya Goldberg-Safir (mgs)
P.S. You can also join me at @roughnotes.mgs on Instagram if you want to be even more unhinged & collective.
What others are saying about Rough Notes:
P.S. remember: basketball lives inside us all.
