Features
Of Rumor and Riot
In late summer of 1967, waves of rumors moved through metropolitan Detroit, announcing a series of race divisions across the city and between city and suburb.
From Comp Lit to the Adjuncts’ Champion: The Academic Odyssey of Maria Maisto
In the spring of 2004, Maria Maisto, a doctoral student in comparative literature at the University of Maryland and a long-time Washingtonian, decided to leave Washington, D.C. for an uncertain future in the Rust Belt.
A State Of Quakes
As sun set on the final evening of 2011, a loud boom interrupted New Years’ Eve revelries in eastern Ohio. Valerie Dearing, who was ringing in the New Year in her living room in the small town of Poland ...
How to Grow a Music Festival: The Nelsonville Music Festival Story
Just before 5pm on Sun., May 31, Seattle-based singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile looked out at the large, energetic and sweaty crowd from her perch, front and center on the Nelsonville Music Festival’s Main Stage...
Tent City in the Heartland: The Life and Death of the Chickahominy Indian Tribal Rescue Mission
I stood on the bridge and looked out over the scattered patches of tents that rose from the land like wild mushrooms, clustered yet separate.
The Gritty Realism of Genre Artist David Gilmour Blythe
In the 1940’s, a Pittsburgh steel baron named G. David Thompson began collecting the paintings of an obscure 19th century artist, David Gilmour Blythe.
Shawarma with a Side of Culture, Controversy: Pittsburgh’s Conflict Kitchen Feels the Heat
Dawn Weleski was on a flight to Houston to attend a conference when she got word that Conflict Kitchen, the critically acclaimed restaurant-qua-public art project she runs with Carnegie Mellon art professor Jon Rubin
Life Without Bats
I grew up in a tiny rural township, ten minutes outside of Akron, Ohio in a neighborhood surrounded by looming second-growth hardwoods and whispering cornfields.
From Carpet Joints to Racinos: How Midwest Gambling Went Legit
Wherever my paternal grandfather is – and if it’s his idea of Heaven, it probably looks like the old Dairy Queen in Lisbon, Ohio, with a couple pool tables – he’s got to be laughing his ass off.
Rediscovering Russell Atkins
A leading avant-garde poet lives in obscurity in Cleveland.

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