Because The Food Section is a teeny-tiny operation, almost everyone who’s considered a member of Team TFS gets a byline. (Want one? We’re not above selling op-ed space, since we don’t plan on staying this small forever. Click here for details on our exciting Soapbox Sponsorship Circle program!) You’ve gotten to know Mark Blankenship through his stories chronicling Nashvillians who’ve built communities around food, and Sheeka Sanahori through her coverage of Atlanta culinarians thriving outside the spotlight, for example.
But this newsletter also benefits from the invaluable contributions of two usually unnamed journalists: Kris Kornbluth, who lays out every story, and Alison Lyn Miller, who edits my work.
Beyond that, though, Miller is an author. Her first book, Rough House: A Father, A Son, and the Pursuit of Pro Wrestling Glory, debuts on Tuesday—and it’s likely she’s coming to a town near you to promote it.
If you happen to live in Macon, you can catch the two of us in conversation at Longleaf Distillery, 664 Second Street, on Thursday, January 22 at 6 p.m. (Paying subscriber? First drink’s on me.) That’s just the second stop on the book tour, though. Her itinerary looks like a TFS subscribers’ address roster, with events in Winston Salem, Spartanburg, Dallas, and Oxford, Mississippi, among other cities: Check out the complete schedule here.
Honestly, even if your nearest bookstore doesn’t appear on the list, you might want to schlep to see her. My copy of Rough House just arrived in the mail, but it’s been lauded by such noted nonfiction writers as Ted Conover, Wright Thompson, and Tommy Tomlinson, a confirmed wrestling fan who says, “You might not know the wrestlers in Miller’s book, but when you finish Rough House, you’ll know their hearts.”
Of course, this newsletter is more concerned with stomachs than hearts, so I asked Miller to reveal a few details about the concession stands she encountered in her years of attending matches in shabby, sometimes shady places. In my experience as an independent wrestling spectator—which is admittedly confined to western North Carolina—fans get hungry before every villain’s exorcised, so venue owners tend to plug in a popcorn machine or Crockpot.
During her reporting, Miller met an owner who daylighted as a hog farmer and occasionally lugged a smoker to shows. Yet most arenas stick to a more standard menu, as described in this excerpt that Miller shared with TFS.
December 25, 2022
Thirty minutes before bell time, some 80 people have taken their seats around the ring inside Landmark Arena in Cornelia, Georgia, a building with peeling paint and a grass parking lot known to those who frequent it as The Church of Southern Wrestling.
Three industrial-grade kerosene heaters blast hot air from the flanks and stage lights burn above the ring. A line snakes to the snack bar where a wall-mounted letter-board menu lists prices: hot dog $2, hamburger $3. Landmark’s holy nickname isn’t an overstatement: people greet each other as they find their seats like they’re settling into the pews of their small-town house of prayer.
Orange duct tape wraps the posts that rise from each corner of the ring, supporting a huge “X” that towers above it. An oversize golden ticket hangs from the ceiling, a few feet from an array of dried blood splatter. It’s a visceral reminder of two intertwined tenets of pro wrestling: opportunity and injury. The first, out of reach for most. The other, all but guaranteed.In the main event, The 12 Slays of Christmas, “Angel of Death” Azrael rips into 12 gift boxes, each containing a weapon to use on his opponent Hold My Beer Hanson. Sometime around 7:30 p.m. Hunter James appears from behind the curtain. In gold-sequined tailcoat and gleaming white boots, he stands out in this landscape like Marilyn Monroe on the subway grate, right down to the platinum hair. The buoyant and muscled 20-year-old, not yet scarred from a lifetime of punches, soars higher and lands crisper than the rest.
Adapted from Rough House: A Father, A Son, and the Pursuit of Pro Wrestling Glory. Copyright © 2026 by Alison Lyn Miller. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Hunter James is planning to join us at Longleaf next week; he’ll also appear with Miller and Tom Junod in Atlanta on January 29. I hope you’ll join us too.
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