Editor’s note: the following is a call for submissions for a new anthology from our partners at Belt Publishing.

You have probably heard this before: Cincinnati is a city of small towns made distinct by topography and undefined, in-between spaces. We want writers to explore the Queen City’s varied neighborhoods and the places between for The Cincinnati Neighborhood Guidebook, an anthology by Belt Publishing. The book will be part of Belt’s Neighborhood Guidebook Series.

From Sayler Park tipping the city’s far-west tail to Mount Lookout on its eastern fringes, from Carthage to the Lower Price Hill, we want essays and other written works that surprise us and tell us something about how we experience living in our neighborhoods, and about how our living in them shapes us. Take us to the San Antonio Italian Chapel’s Pizza Party in South Fairmount, the state’s oldest black cemetery in Oakley, the boxing gym in the basement of West End’s Seven Hills Neighborhood Houses or the train yards and waterways of the Mill Creek Valley.

We’re hoping to get a diversity of voices and experiences representing as wide a sample from the city’s fifty-two distinct neighborhoods, its many informal sub-neighborhoods and outlying suburbs as possible. Yes, sure, you can submit something about Over-the-Rhine or Northside. But we also really want to hear voices from South Cumminsville, Bond Hill and East Westwood, not to mention Forest Park or Delhi outside the city limits.

Interpret the above as you wish, so long as the piece you submit is about an area in Greater Cincinnati. Longer submissions will be considered, but we’re looking for work that marries unique insight about lived experience with economy of language. Somewhere between 250 and 1,000 words would be a lovely place to end up for your essay.

Editor Nick Swartsell will work with authors in editing accepted submissions. Authors will be compensated.

Submissions are due by July 1, 2021. Please submit all entries to [email protected].

Cover image via Wikimedia Commons.