The City Anthology Series
Belt’s city anthologies are written by and for Rust Belt communities. The books take you on tours led by [...]
Notches: A Belt Publishing Imprint
With the publication of How To Speak Midwestern by Edward McClelland on December 1, 2016, Belt Publishing launches its new Notches imprint.
The View from Pittsburgh: The Media’s Role in the Election
We talked with Eric Boyd, editor of Belt's Pittsburgh Anthology, about the role the local and national media played in the [...]
How To Support Good Journalism
Anna Clark, editor of Belt's A Detroit Anthology, has some great suggestions for how to support local journalism: "I’m thinking [...]
What’s in A Name? Cleveland’s Brooklyn Centre
What’s in a name? In my neighborhood, confusion. Countless lifelong Greater Clevelanders have asked me, “So what part of town do you live in?” and I always begin my answer, “Well, the city calls it ‘Brooklyn Centre,’ but...”
Collinwood 1908: Bringing A Fire Back Into History
On March 4, 1908, flames tore through the Lake View School building in Collinwood, Ohio, trapping many of the roughly 350 people in it. 172 children, two teachers, and one rescuer died.
Slavic Village: A Guide
To visit Slavic Village, preferably wait until a bitterly cold evening in February, and in the dark and the snow, take the I-77 North exit for Pershing Avenue. Turn west, and as the road becomes a dead-end, ignore the sparseness of the streetlights and the horrifying industrial shapes rearing up from the barbed-wire fences on either side of you.
The Ecology of Ruin
As a grad student in ecology, I spent a lot of time in the woods with a camera for company. I was living in upstate New York, studying how plants recolonize forests growing up on old fields, and why some return faster than others.
Poppin’ The Rag: from Louis Stokes’ The Gentleman From Ohio
When I was twelve years old my paper route took me all through the area around Sixty-Ninth and Cedar in the heart of Cleveland's black neighborhood, where my younger brother Carl and I lived on the first floor of a rickety old house with our mom, Louise, and our grandmother, Fannie Stone.
The Opposite of Cool: Parma’s Ukrainian Village
by George Mount excerpted from The Cleveland Neighborhood Guidebook There’s an effort in Cleveland to recreate what it once [...]
Visiting Gritty South Bend & Glitzy Notre Dame, Two Sides of the Rust Belt
By Matt Altstiel If you’ve ever watched Parks & Recreation, you’re familiar with the dichotomy between run-down yet plucky [...]
The Glassblock, A New Pittsburgh Magazine
In 2014, Adam Shuck started a Pittsburgh-based newsletter, Eat That, Read This. It caught on, filling a gap in the city's [...]