Can you smell what Alison Lyn Miller is cooking? Her book, Rough House: A Father, a Son, and the Pursuit of Pro Wrestling Glory, explores what it takes to break into wrestling. From backyards and dark gyms in rural Georgia, Miller takes readers into the world of Hunter James, an aspiring superstar. Expertly researched and luciously written, Miller peels back a curtain of the mythical world of pro wrestling in ways that haven’t been seen since 1999’s haunting documentary Beyond the Mat.
We caught up with Miller via email to explore why she loves wrestling, how she wrote this book, and the relationship between writer and subject in nonfiction.
My passion for professional wrestling was reinvigorated in 2025, after not watching or following in about 25 years. What draws you to the world of professional wrestling?
It’s fun! And whether you’re in the ring or sitting around it, it’s cathartic. Where else can you heckle someone at max volume without risk of being slugged? I was also drawn to the juxtaposition I saw in the lowest tiers of indie wrestling: flashy gear in gritty venues, performers removing work uniforms and stepping into custom-made getups that reflect their individuality, evolving into characters of their own design that deliver them from the mundanity of everyday life.
What is the biggest misconception about professional wrestling you often hear when you tell people you were writing a book about it?
That it’s for idiots. It’s not. Yes, it’s hyperbolic. Yes, it’s exaggerated and predetermined. Fans of professional wrestling know all that and that’s why they love it. I think some people just don’t know what to do with wrestling because it doesn’t fit nicely into a category. It’s not traditional sport. It’s not exactly theatre. I wanted to know how this culturally dismissed phenomenon could persist all over the world for so long. I figured that out in writing this book and I hope my readers will too, by reading it.
How did this project about Hunter James come about?
After interviewing and observing wrestlers around Georgia, my home state, for two years, I started working on a book proposal with my agent, David Black. He made it clear I needed a strong central character to carry the story. Hunter was 16 when I met him–young, confident, laser-focused on his dream, and thus, rife for setback. The added layer of his relationship with his father, Billy Ray, who chased the same dream, made him someone readers could relate to, someone they would both cheer on and grow frustrated with along the way. I sensed—and confirmed by asking around—that he was a very promising wrestler on the indie circuit here.
Can you walk readers through the process of writing this? Specifically, when you knew it wasn’t just an article and how you approached writing a nonfiction book.
I wrote two magazine pieces about Georgia’s indie wrestling scene: one for the Southern Foodways Alliance’s Gravy, about going to Chili’s with a bunch of wrestlers after their show, and another for Sports Illustrated about a model for wrestling inclusivity where some might least expect it (a VFW in south Georgia). I had access to a community willing to share its stories, and I knew there was so much depth to this thing they were so passionate about. Lots of books have been written about wrestling but none delivered a picture of what it’s like at this level in the way I wanted to tell it: a wrestling bildungsroman.
I speak mostly to fiction writers who tell me novels can take anywhere from a few years to a decade to write. Then selling it takes longer. What was the journey of writing this, finding an agent, selling it, and editing like?
I started the University of Georgia’s low-residency Narrative Nonfiction MFA program in 2019 and worked with John T. Edge, Vicki Michaelis, and the late Valerie Boyd. As I fumbled around the first semester trying to come up with stories, I thought back to a night earlier that year when I attended a professional wrestling show at a brewery in Athens, Georgia, where I live. The relationship between performers, and between performers and fans, was so strong it was palpable. It was a symbiosis, really, because in wrestling, the fans have some agency over the action in the ring. By the end I was yelling a name I’d never heard with a force I barely recognized. After I finished the program John T. introduced me to his agent, David Black, who understood the story I wanted to tell. He and I spent a year on the proposal and received a ton of graceful no’s after sending it out. Only one editor, Dan Gerstle, then at the Norton imprint Liveright, wanted to talk. He understood the book–that it wasn’t a book about wrestling, it was a book about life and family and community and performance and violence and self-worth. Still, he could not get buy-in from the editorial board (kinda wish I had been in the room to hear their feedback but also glad I wasn’t!). David told me I could table it for a few months, tweak the proposal, and go back to Dan to see if anything had changed–or abandon it all together. I had a two-week residency lined up at the Hambidge Center in North Georgia. During that time I reworked the proposal to put Hunter and Billy Ray’s relationship front and center. David sent it again to Dan, who by then had been promoted to editor-in-chief of Norton. Soon enough, he set us up with editor Zeba Arora, who sent the offer. I spent the next year writing the book and sending it to Zeba in 20,000-word increments so she could edit as we went. The action in the book was unfolding as I was writing so for a long time, none of us knew how it would end.
What is the relationship like between writer/journalist and subject? How did this differ when writing a book compared to articles?
For a book you have to show up and stick around in a way you don’t for a single article. You have to delve into the context of what you’re writing about and mine for meaning in what you see. Beyond building trust, I encouraged people to talk about experiences and details they may not have thought were important. A wrestler’s first instinct is to talk about their last show, their next show, their next bid for the belt, etc. but I wanted to know what happened when they left the ring and what led them to it in the first place.