“Art is [still] a Weapon”: A Brief History of the Protest Novel
“Every time he saw another building in Pittsburgh being spray washed to remove the decades of soot… he would think of their legacies being slowly erased.”
Turtle Lake
Those who did it from a distance erased the people’s language. Once they could claim their fiction of terra nullius they flooded in close and put up fences. They erased the history of their conquest and they erased the lake’s history too.
On Raymond Thompson’s “Appalachian Ghost”
Thompson captured photos of the place — the hills of WVA folding into each other like origami, holding mist and dew in the hollows. And he staged new photos which conjure these working men, bearing up under hours of physical labor, covered in white dust, looking otherworldly but also fully human and integral to the achievement.
May Day is a Rust Belt Holiday
May Day isn’t just an estimably American holiday, it’s a particularly Rust Belt holiday, forged in the cauldron of Chicago’s streets and factories, born from the experience of workers in the mills and plants of Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland.
My Midwestern Fleetwood Mac
She came from a dying Rust Belt town in southeast Ohio, and I came from a famously dying Rust Belt town an hour north of Detroit. We were both oldest children, with the same letter leading our first and last name. Our birthdays were one day apart. And, we both loved Fleetwood Mac.
Urban Ecology and Animism in the Landscape of the Great Lakes
An interview with Matt Stansberry and Gavin Van Horn.
Squirrel Hill is a Special Place—and It’s Not by Accident
On tragedy, Jewish faith, and the intentional community that makes this Pittsburgh neighborhood unique.
Conjuring Steel
Fly-fishing for steelhead in the Cuyahoga—with a touch of tarot.
Call for Submissions: The Chicago Anthology
Here at Belt we’re in the business of covering the Rust Belt. But what exactly does that mean when it comes to Chicago?