Be the First to Get Belt’s ‘Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook’!
The Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook is ready for pre-order! If you loved A Detroit Anthology and How to Live in Detroit Without Being a [...]
Sorry, So-called Blue States, You Don’t Get to Walk Away
By Tim Carmody In 2016, I voted in my hometown, a Detroit suburb called Madison Heights. (It’s where the [...]
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 [...]
Yes, you can do something about Donald Trump
I was sitting at home on January 26, reading the news and having a hard time sitting still. The shock of a new president had not (and still has not) worn off, and story after story was pushing me toward a deeper sense of despair. It was far beyond politics—I grew up in rural Michigan, and Republicans are not foreign, scary creatures to me.
From the Editor: We’re All In This Together
Last summer I was at the Soggy Bottom Bar in downtown Flint, Michigan for the launch of Happy Anyway: A Flint Anthology, which I had edited, and author Aaron Foley and I were doing the very cool thing of signing each other’s books.
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 [...]
Living LGBT in the Midwest in the Time of Trump
I’ve tried over and over and over to try and push out some thoughts about gay life in the Midwest. What exactly is there to be said that would help outsiders understand what we’re like around these parts? I keep coming up short.
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.
Refugees In The Rust Belt
While the USA wrestles with the politics and policies of immigration and refugees, Belt presents nine moving essays about refugees living throughout the Rust Belt…
In Southwest Michigan, many aren’t shrugging off the march
On Saturday, January 21, the New York Times deployed a dozen reporters far and wide to report on the women’s marches happening across the country.
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.
Urban Greenways: Stalking the Ruins of Pittsburgh
Nestled within some of Pittsburgh’s many wooded hillsides, or “greenways,” are dark corners that harbor vestiges of long demolished houses, city blocks, and even whole neighborhoods.