Brian Oliu • Book Signing & Talk

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Join us on Friday, February 17 from 5:30-7:00 PM, as we welcome Brian Oliu to Ernest & Hadley Booksellers, to read and discuss his latest book of creative non-fiction - Body Drop: Notes on Fandom and Pain in Professional Wrestling.

~ A lyrical look at a sometimes brutal sport ~

Professional wrestling is a strange beast full of contradictions--part live soap opera, part hypermasculine violent spectacle. It is an indelibly American pastime enjoyed by millions and leads a select group of wrestlers to international fame. It's also a sport that leaves many of its athletes broken and battered, at serious risk of addiction, poverty, and early death. Body Drop looks deeply at the nuances of professional wrestling and its strange place within American culture. Brian Oliu offers deeply personal meditations on such topics as disability, chronic pain, body image, masculinity, class, and more, all through the lens of American professional wrestling.

Wrestling is a sport that is gleefully fake, but the people who love it are very real. In holding up this particular part of American culture to scrutiny, Oliu acknowledges that the wrestling world, like our own, is one that has been crafted, but by showing readers the scaffolding that holds everything up, he invites us to figure out what holds our own realities straight.

Brian Oliu currently teaches and writes in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He is the author of three chapbooks and five full-length collections of non-fiction, including the lyric-memoir i/o, and So You Know It's Me, a collection of Craigslist Missed Connections. What Shot Did You Ever Take, a collaborative book of poetry on the Rocky film series with the poet Jason McCall, was released in 2021. His book of essays Body Drop: Notes on Fandom and Pain in Professional Wrestling was released in 2021 by The University of North Carolina Press. Essays on topics ranging from 8-bit video games, to long distance running, to Carly Rae Jepsen, appear in Catapult, The Rumpus, Inside Higher Ed, McSweeney's, DIAGRAM, TriQuarterly, Runner's World, Waxwing, Gay Magazine, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere.

Event date: 
Friday, February 17, 2023 - 5:30pm to 7:00pm
Event address: 
1928 7Th St
Tuscaloosa, AL 35401-1829
Body Drop: Notes on Fandom and Pain in Professional Wrestling By Brian Oliu Cover Image
$19.00
ISBN: 9781469663418
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: University of North Carolina Press - September 28th, 2021