An Honest Pitch: Stoner by John Williams
The novelist John Williams (1922-1994) wasn’t much of a pitchman for his work. In the late 50s he wrote a letter to his agent, Marie Rodell, to discuss one of the books he was working on...
Belt Publishing Announces Expansion With Two New Books
Belt Publishing is thrilled to announce a new imprint, to be launched later 2016. The imprint will feature mid-career and emerging authors writing "novella" length non-fiction.
Paying Careful Attention: An Interview With Bonnie Jo Campbell
Most of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s characters live where she does, in Comstock Township, a southern Michigan region that the New York Times says she depicts as “part dump, part wilderness and part farmland.”
Graphically Persian in Ohio: Novel Adventures from Columbus Artists
Like Gilgamesh, Sir Gawain, Luke Skywalker, Batman, Harry Potter, and Katniss Everdeen, Minoo Shirazi has been chosen by the universe to battle evil.
Happy Birthday, Jackass!
It is with great pride that we at Belt announce the birth of our newest book: Aaron Foley's How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass, which officially hits the streets today.
From Greece To Negroland: Ethnicity In Literature
Like many Greek-Americans in the Chicago suburbs in the 60s and 70s, my family had a bookshelf full of titles by Harry Mark Petrakis.
The Flint Anthology: Call for Submissions
It’s time to tell the stories of Flint. That’s stories of Flint, mind you, not story, because there is no one story, no singular narrative that can define the Vehicle City.
Hart Crane In Cleveland
Hart Crane, who is famous for having jumped off the back of a boat at age 32 after having been lauded as one of America’s greatest poets, is most often associated with New York.
What Remains: An Interview with Matt Bell
Matt Bell’s new novel Scrapper, out this month from Soho Press, begins with a sweeping history of Detroit told from the Packard Plant floor. “See the body of the plant,” the novel directs us, as if sung by a ghostly chorus.
Demolition Means Progress? An Interview With Author Andrew Highsmith
No state’s cities are more decrepit than Michigan’s. Detroit has become a showcase for urban blight, an international symbol of decay that attracts art photographers and ruin pornographers from all over the world.
Collective Anxieties: Money, Worry, and the Midwestern Novel
Dyson, Ohio, the central character in Patrick Wensink’s new comic novel, Fake Fruit Factory, is a little town in big trouble. It has a $10 million budget gap to close after years of industrial collapse and civic lassitude.
In Search of the Midwestern “We”: A Roundtable With Poets David Baker and Jill Bialosky
You may already know the Dawn Powell line “All Americans come from Ohio originally, if only briefly.” If you’re like me, you might both smile and wince as you read it.