"PINS manages to break new ground by exploring the clannish, conflicted homoeroticism of
wrestling culture. Provenzano knows this territory well, and clearly loves their obsessive, sweaty world."
" ... already making waves with audiences around the country."
Cyclizen: Politics on Wheels reviews get PINS PINS the play chapter one myrmbership sports complex
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"Provenzano's writing fully captures the reader ... a descriptive writer of the Ernest Hemingway model .. terse, stripped down, and to the point." -- Lambda Book Report
"A presciently written novel of athletics in small town America, a grippingly real account and a chilling reminder of how
far we still have to travel."
"A heartfelt and touching story, unwaveringly authentic and compelling. His characters wrestle with each other, vividly, and also with larger issues of sexuality, faith and family."
"While to many gay men wrestling has a strongly erotic component, sports columnist and fiction writer Provenzano does much more in this debut novel than merely glorify muscle and sweat, the strain of the pin and the friction of body on body; he also tells a taut tale of high school homophobia, of how athletic teens cope with stereotypes, prejudice and hate, and of how much the support of family and friends can mean to gay youth. It belongs on every high school library shelf. Does that make PINS sound too serious? It's also a dramatically entertaining read."
"Jim Provenzano is a jock who writes well, thinks clearly and tells great stories, an author who balances inner and outer elements in his writing with insight, clarity and downright cheek, and an author to watch, on the book charts and on the wrestling mat."
"In few cultural arenas is the thorny boundary between machismo and homophobia/phila crossed save in the most stereotyped fashion, Jim Provenzano's smart Sports Complex column in The Bay Area Reporter being one notable journalistic exception."
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