This week we visit with Alison Lyn Miller in Athens, Georgia.

Alison Lyn Miller grew up in Hartwell, Georgia, and worked as a magazine editor in New York City and Dallas before moving to Athens, Georgia, in 2017. In 2020, she started reporting and writing about independent professional wrestlers around the state and published pieces in Sports Illustrated and Gravy. Her first book, Rough House (W.W. Norton, Jan. ’26), set in Georgia’s small-town professional wrestling scene, explores themes of escapism, self-actualization, performance and violence, and reveals the depth of an often-dismissed American pastime. She has written for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Post, and Garden & Gun, among others, and has been awarded residencies at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Science (2023) and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2024). She is 2021 graduate of the Narrative Nonfiction MFA program at The University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism & Mass Communication.

BUY AND READ ROUGH HOUSE

For more on Alison: alisonlynmiller.com

Alison's Books on the Bed:

The Last Cowboys: A Pioneer Family in the New West by John Branch

The Last Fine Time by Verlyn Klinkenborg

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel

Hiroshima by John Hersey

Dirtbag Queen: A Memoir of My Mother by Andy Corren

Matt's Gifts for Alison:

Bookshop Cats by Daphne Du Meowier

They Said They Wanted Revolution by Neda Toloui-Semnani

A Race to the Bottom of Crazy: Dispatches from Arizona by Richard Grant

Gene Smith's Sink: A Wide-Angle View by Sam Stephenson