Release day for S.C. Novel Series winner
Robert Maynor debuts as novelist
Copious amounts of high school football scores and updates populated The Hub’s X timeline last Friday night—Week Zero, apparently—so we applaud the timing of this book release.
The Big Game Is Every Night, debut novel of South Carolina Novel Series winner Robert Maynor, is set for release by Hub City Press today. Maynor, a Lowcountry writer, was announced as inaugural winner of the novel series roughly a year ago. Writers selected for biennial publication in this series are awarded $1,500 and book publication, including marketing and tour support from Hub City Press and the series partners: the South Carolina Arts Commission, South Carolina State Library, and South Carolina Humanities.
The novel also receives placement in all South Carolina state libraries and readings/events with presenting sponsors, making it accessible to broad segments of our population! Keep reading for tour dates.
About The Big Game Is Every Night
Told in the keen, honest voice of a young man growing up on the rural South Carolina coast, The Big Game Is Every Night grapples with masculinity, race, and family in contemporary blue-collar America.
Grady Hayes’s whole life revolves around football. When he breaks his leg starting a game against a rival high school, his life comes unglued. As he recovers, Grady grows bored and angry. He no longer relates to his mom, his cousin, or the girl he’s been talking to, and loses interest in catfishing and eating family suppers on the weekends. When Grady tries to return to the team, his spot has been filled, and there are rumors flying about why Coach made Grady a starting running-back in the first place.
Frustrated and alone, Grady falls in with Hambone, a brooding older classmate, who takes him deep into the swamps to hunt racoons and experiment with drugs. After an ugly confrontation with another player in the locker room, his relationship with Hambone turns dark and violent. Out of options, Grady’s mom calls in his estranged father to set him straight, and Grady realizes that his dad isn’t the man he remembers.
In his debut novel, Robert Maynor delivers a literary Lowcountry Friday Night Lights that shines a harsh light on the ways American men are steeped in violence, and how hard it can be to shake loose the toxic norms that unchecked can keep us all so far apart.
– Hub City Press
Book tour info
TONIGHT! at 5 p.m.
The Sparrow, 1078 E. Montague Ave # D, North Charleston
SEPT. 12 at 6 p.m.
All Good Books, 734 Harden St., Columbia
with poet and author Ray McManus, 2023 S.C. Governor’s Award for the Arts recipient
SEPT. 14 at 6 p.m.
Hub City Bookshop, 186 W. Main St., Spartanburg