Meet The Author: McKenzie Coan

Paralympic swimmer and author McKenzie Coan will never forget the day a child approached her and said, “You are my hero.”

She was at a signing event for her book, Breaking Free: Shattering Expectations and Thriving with Ambition in Pursuit of Gold, which was published last year, just before the Paralympic Games in Tokyo.

At the book signing, a girl about 7 years old approached Coan.

“She was holding the book and she started to cry and cry,” Coan said. “She came up to me and she goes, ‘You're my hero. I sleep with this under my pillow.’”

Coan was born to inspire, and she has done just that. 

Coan was diagnosed with osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease) when she was 19 days old, and her parents were told that she would never be able to walk, speak or even prop up her head.

Now, at 25 years old, Coan continues to prove the world wrong. 

A four-time Paralympic gold medalist, Coan was recently named to her 10th consecutive national team since 2012. She is currently training six days a week for the World Para Swimming World Series in Indianapolis in April. She is also preparing for the World Para Swimming Championships in Madeira, Portugal, in June.

It’s a heavy load, but Coan is used to that. This time last year, she was preparing for the Paralympics while also wrapping up writing Breaking Free. Coan knew she always wanted to write a book, but she didn’t expect it to be while training for Tokyo. The forced shutdowns of the pandemic had loosened her schedule, though, so she took advantage of the extra time. 

Coan wrote alongside her co-author, Holly Neumann, while simultaneously studying for the LSAT and training six days a week. Despite being on a strict time schedule to accomplish each task, when Coan met that little girl with her book in hand, she knew the effort and hard work was worth it.

“Just that one moment made that entire experience worth it,” Coan said. “All that hard work, all those months, was worth that one moment. I honestly was just hoping that this book could make a difference for one person, and to be told that, I mean, I would have done the experience 30 times over again.”

When she was 10, Coan’s mother encouraged her to start journaling about swimming and her medical struggles.She has not stopped writing since.

Her favorite journal entries are from when she was 16 at her first Paralympics in London in 2012. 

“I wrote about what the aquatic center smelled like, what the lights were like inside, just to get every single detail I possibly could to remember it forever,” Coan said. “And that, to me, is such a gift and a blessing that I look back on. I'm so glad I have those pages.”

Through the writing process for Breaking Free, Coan’s parents shared raw information and stories about her medical history and the backlash they received from others for letting her swim.  

“I get goosebumps; it just gives me a whole new appreciation for everything they've done for me,” she said. “While writing my book, I realized that swimming is what gave me my freedom.” 

Coan’s rewarding experience of being a new author and her passion for writing has her considering a sequel. 

But first, she is starting a new chapter in her life this fall as she enters law school at Rutgers University. Coan was accepted into 18 law schools, and choosing where to attend was one of the hardest decisions she’s ever made. 

Rutgers was the best fit for Coan and had everything she was looking for, she said. She was offered quite a few scholarships.  

Coan was inspired to pursue a law career by her favorite movie, “Legally Blonde,” when she was 12 years old, a story she relays in the book.

After watching the movie several times, she saw how much of a difference she could make in people’s lives by becoming a lawyer. Coan wants to use her law degree to advocate for disability rights. 

Coan will juggle her law studies with training and swimming, and she anticipates reverting to a similar schedule she developed while attending Loyola University  Maryland, where she earned a bachelor’s in political science. She was on the school’s Div. I swim team there, while also a member of the U.S. Paralympic national team and participating on multiple school committees.  

“Four years of that really taught me time management,” she said. “Put your mind to it. If you want something, you can do it. It's just about making it work.”

Attending Rutgers means Coan will be making a big move to Newark, New Jersey. She’s excited about the move because she will be so close to New York, which is where she eventually wants to live and work. 

In between World Championships in Portugal this summer and the big move in the fall, Coan hopes she will be able to go on additional book tours and public speaking opportunities. 

“One of the coolest things about swimming and public speaking is that I get to make friends from all over the country and all over the world,” Coan said. 

Including little girls who sleep with books under their pillows.

Breaking Free is available from Amazon and other booksellers. Learn more about McKenzie on her website or follow her on Instagram.