Forthcoming in 2018: The New Old Town: Early Gentrification in Chicago
The story was the same in Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago: once-booming cities had started to shrink. Historic neighborhoods [...]
Coming in 2018: Folktales and Legends of the Middle West
Joe Magarac, the Pittsburgh steelworker who was born inside an ore mountain and squeezed out rails between his fingers. Hiawatha, the man-god who conquered the King of Fish and founded the Iroquois Nation. Coyote, the trickster of the Great Plains.
Check Out the Cover For The Chicago Anthology
We’re unveiling the cover for Belt Publishing’s forthcoming Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology, and we couldn’t be more excited. The cover was designed by legendary Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick, known for his style of vibrant collages.
Announcing In the Watershed: A Journey Down the Maumee River
For several years, Ryan Schnurr watched media coverage of Lake Erie algae blooms with a growing sense of unease. [...]
‘The New Midwest’ Hailed by Critics as the Book we Need in the Trump Era
Mark Athitakis’s book, The New Midwest: A Guide to Contemporary Fiction of the Great Lakes, Great Plains, and Rust Belt, is [...]
A Big, Useless Bathtub, Or The Inland Sea
It’s easy to mistake the Great Lakes for the ocean, at first. I’ve brought a few people to see Lake Michigan for the first time, and that’s what they all say: “It looks like the ocean!”
‘Are yinz goin’ to read this?’ A Guide to Pittsburghese
By Edward McClelland No Midwestern city is more conscious than Pittsburgh of the way it speaks—or, more accurately, the way [...]
The Great Lakes are sicker than we think
By Matt Stansberry In The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, journalist Dan Egan makes the case that the [...]
Grand Rapids Grassroots: An Anthology – Call For Submissions
Ashley E. Nickels and Dani Vilella have joined forces to compile articles, poetry, and personal narratives about and by Grand [...]
In Appalachia, Solidarity For the Rust Belt
In the pre-election media race to locate the “heart of Trump Country,” all finish lines pointed toward Appalachia and the Rust Belt. In declining cities across these sometimes overlapping regions, journalists drank from what appeared to be an infinite well of wrenching stories from economically precarious white voters.
The Past and Present of the Fiction of the Midwest (Wherever That Is)
A few years ago I noticed something about my favorite works of contemporary fiction set in the Midwest: they were all set in the past.
Introduction To How To Speak Midwestern
Every part of the United States has its own accent. The Midwest — defined, for the purposes of this book, as west of Exit 41 on the New York State Thruway, east of the Missouri River, and north of the Ohio River...