The Spirit of Sam Jones
"Among the giants on Saginaw Street in downtown Flint [Michigan] stands my Uncle Melton. Chances are you won’t see him. But I can assure you, he’s there."
The Ultimate Price
"With a teardrop punctuating the final line of the emotional missive, A.S.A. Barnes painted a vivid picture in dark, irate hues, depicting my disregard for human life."
Life and Belonging in Knox County, Ohio
The president of Kenyon College on life as a black man in a majority white county.
Conjuring Steel
Fly-fishing for steelhead in the Cuyahoga—with a touch of tarot.
Unfertile Ground
On Toni Morrison, Black womanhood, and the Minnesota landscape.
New Galilee Eclipse
By Jennifer Niesslein The light is getting progressively stranger the closer we come to peak eclipse. It’s August, 2017, and [...]
Dad Rock: Tom Petty and the Music of My Father
By Erin Osmon When we buried my mother in a sylvan plot on the north side of Evansville, Indiana, she [...]
Too Fancy for Flint?
I live in Flint. I own a home in the city. However, I’m still often reluctant to call Flint my home. This isn’t because I’m not madly in love with this place, or incredibly proud to live in the city. It’s because of the way I talk. As soon as I open my mouth, most people realize I’m clearly not from here.
Main-Travelled Roads: Introduction
By Brianne Jaquette From Main-Travelled Roads, by Hamlin Garland, an inaugural title in Belt Publishing’s new Belt Revivals imprint, reprinting [...]
Looking For Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was a man of many talents, but interior design was not one of them. At his home in Springfield, Illinois, his bed is covered in a quilt with alternating red stripes and blue squares. The rug on the floor has stripes of red, green, and blue running in the opposite direction.
In observance of the first day of summer, an ode to my lawn mower
By Bert Stratton I didn’t used to like to cut my grass. I made my children do it, but then they [...]
This Is Why I’m Ready to Walk: Letter from a University of Michigan-Flint Lecturer
By Scott Atkinson Photograph by Erin Emory This is why I teach. I’m perhaps halfway through my digital stack of [...]