The Best of Belt Magazine 2021
Our new anthology of regional writing, available exclusively to Belt members.
The Bird Patrol
Chicago is the most dangerous city in the country for birds. Meet the people who want to change that.
Riding the Fort Wayne Line
A proposed Amtrak route would restore passenger service between Chicago, Fort Wayne, Columbus, and Pittsburgh. Can new federal investment make it happen?
Climate Emergency and Environmental Justice in the Rust Belt
Stories on climate change, industrial legacies, and planning for a just future.
Read These Stories Instead of Watching Hillbilly Elegy
Eleven pieces on identity, community, exploitation, and resilience in Appalachia.
Armed, Angry Men
Trump, militias, and the long history of voter intimidation and violence in the Midwest.
Racism, Rebellion, and Police Violence in the Midwest
Stories on the long history of racism and police violence in the Midwest—and what to do about it.
Rust Belt Independents
How one Indiana community rejected Trumpism.
Losing the Farm
"The twentieth century in America brought dramatic changes to the farm...one of which was the abstraction of my family and me from our roots on the land."
Tracy K. Smith’s Civic Vision
The U.S. poet laureate on her new edited collection and how literature can mend a fractured civic culture.
Introduction to In The Watershed: A Journey Down The Maumee River
The Maumee River does not begin.
A ‘Toxic Tour’ of the Whiting Refinery on the Shores of Lake Michigan
One Saturday in June, I drove around the southern edge of Lake Michigan with Thomas Frank, an activist from East Chicago, Indiana, looking for oil. We had met a few weeks previous, at a conference put on by the Freshwater Lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Frank was on a panel about oil pipelines.