Chris Koslowski in Conversation with Robert Maynor

Join us at the Bearded Ax on August 30 in celebration of Chris Koslowski's debut novel, Kayfabe. Koslowski will be joined in conversation with Edisto-based author Robert Maynor. Q&A and signing will follow discussion.

Preorder your copies of the books with Itinerant Literate:

Kayfabe | $28.00

The Big Game Is Every Night | $16.95

Books by both authors will also be available for purchase at the event.

Get into the ax-throwing theme: Bearded Ax will have 4 lanes reserved for event attendees. If you decide to try your hand, your bar tab will be updated. Skål!

At 26, Dom Contreras has already spent a decade jobbing through the minor leagues of professional wrestling as Hack Barlow, a 300-pound axe-swinging lumberjack. As his body breaks down and his star power fades, he must invent a new gimmick before he loses the only job he’s ever known. Meanwhile, Dom’s 17-year-old sister Pilar is eager to make her own pro wrestling debut. Dom is determined to keep Pilar under his wing, away from the predators of a business infamous for eating its young. At the same time, he has a vision for her meteoric rise to the top—not just of his own outfit, the middling Mid-Coast Championship Wrestling promotion outside of Charlotte, but all the way to stardom (and a big payday) in the WWE. The siblings are close, spending much of their time packed into Dom’s ancient Honda Civic en route to shows across the south, but as Dom craves privacy and Pilar reckons with her brother’s conflicting roles of roommate, father figure, manager and coach, their relationship quickly begins to fray.

After Dom loses his temper in a match and Pilar injures herself preparing for her big tryout, Bonnie Blue, the eccentric owner of MCCW, spots an opportunity. She is poised, after years of scheming, to unveil her life’s handiwork: an underground, guerrilla-style pro wrestling network with bouts climaxing in real, premeditated injury. To save his career—and his sister’s hopes of breaking out—Dom must become Bonnie’s new star and take on the one persona he swore he’d never embrace.

A University of Michigan graduate, Chris Koslowski holds an MA in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in Fiction from the University of South Carolina. His fiction has been published in Blue Mesa Review, Front Porch Journal, and Day One. He lives with his family in Columbia, South Carolina.

Robert Maynor is from the Lowcountry of South Carolina. He lives and writes in a patched-up fish camp on the bank of the Edisto River, the longest free-flowing blackwater river in North America. His fiction explores the spectrum of complexities and contradictions in the contemporary American South. His short stories have appeared in Blood Orange Review, BULL, the Carolina Quarterly, and CRAFT, among other outlets. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and he is the past recipient of the Larry Brown Short Story Award and the Coker Fellowship in Fiction from the South Carolina Academy of Authors. The Big Game Is Every Night is his first novel. He lives in Edisto, SC.

Host or Publisher Itinerant Literate Books