The Pittsburgh Anthology
Edited by Eric Boyd
Belt Publishing, 2015
Pittsburgh is ever-changing – once dusted with soot from the mills, parts of the city now gleam with the polish of new technologies. Still, as editor Eric Boyd writes in the introduction to The Pittsburgh Anthology, “Little remnants of the old steel industry are littered across the area. A smokestack here, a ladle rail-car there. But while the shadow of this town’s past is long, it’s not inescapable.” In this book Boyd aims for the surprising, elusive stories that capture a Pittsburgh in transition. Contributors run the gamut from MacArthur-award winning photograher LaToya Ruby Frazier to 15-year-old Nico Chiodi, the book’s youngest contributor, who chronicles the doings of the North Side Banjo Club. “Everyone in this book,” writes Boyd, “is talking about the city, the things surrounding it; all of the pieces have been created with experience, intimacy, and personality. This book, I hope, will speak to you, not at you. Because we all know this city is changing. We’re just not exactly sure what that means.”
Featuring work by Amy Jo Burns, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Ben Gwin, Cody McDevitt, David Newman, and many more.
Table of Contents
Introduction
From the Diaspora – Bethany Lang
Pittsburgh Sandlots – Jody DiPerna
Banjos on the North Side – Nico Chiodi
Is Pittsburgh America’s Most Livable City? – Sean Posey
Steel City Fandom – Brendan Hykes
Chasing the Illusion – Cody McDevitt
Hour of Love – Jess Craig
Homestead Triptych – Rachel Wilkinson
The Heart of Saturday Night – Kyle Mimnaugh
Time Capsule, 2005 – Robert Yune
The T to Nowhere – J.J. Lendl
Retraced Route – Adam Dupaski
The Lonesome Passing of Jay Paulson – Andy Kohler
The Mt. Washington Monument – Melanie Cox McCluskey
Rust Belt Heroin Chic – Ben Gwin
Rebecca Morgan Paintings
Robert Qualters Paintings
Stoplight – Amy Jo Burns
Look, Decrease – Eric Boyd
LaToya Ruby Frazier Photographs
The Bottoms – Matthew Newton
The Missing Made Visible: In the Footsteps of Teenie Harris – Yona Harvey
Bright Pittsburgh Morning – Maricio Kilwein Guevara
The Altar Boy – Maricio Kilwein Guevara
A Middle Aged Student’s Guide to Social Work – Dave Newman
Brown elds – John Lawson
At Pegasus – Terrance Hayes
I’m Into Leather – Lori Jakiela
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? – Rachel Mabe
Equity – Michael Gerhard Martin
Picksburgh Sampler–Furill – Ann Curran
The Pittsburgh Poem Is – Ann Curran
Lost City – Lisa Toboz
Rebirth of the Hollywood Lanes – Kevin Tasker
The River Underneath the City – Scott Silsbe
I’m Still a Jagov But I Love It – Scott Silsbe
Bob Perkoski Photographs
A Poem Written for the Aviary at a Time of its Possible Closing – Robert Gibb
Steelworkers’ Lockers, Pittsburgh History Center – Robert Gibb
The Hall of Architecture – Robert Gibb
Steel Engravings – Robert Gibb
From The Employments of Time in the Homestead – Robert Gibb
Enclave (for Jimmy Cvetic) – Matthew Plumb
Shopping is Your Warholian Duty – Arielle Teer
Contributors
Editor’s Acknowledgements
Eric Boyd has lived in and around Pittsburgh most of his life and is currently writing a short story collection based in Homestead, PA, called Brownfields. His writing has appeared in, among others, Prison Noir (Akashic Books), Words Without Walls (Trinity University Press), Guernica, The Offing magazine, PEN America Journal, and Fourth River. His blog is at EricBoydblog.tumblr.com.
Praise for The Pittsburgh Anthology
“These voices are varied and quirky, some polished and professional sounding, some a little rough around the edges. But they are uniformly interesting and genuine.” — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
What editor Eric Boyd has chosen to do is temper all of the Most Livable City rah rah with essays, stories and poems of a grittier, more complex nature …Ben Gwin’s beautifully wrought story dealing with heroin and recovery is one of the finest pieces of writing I’ve read all year.” — Pittsburgh Magazine
“Characterizing a place can be an elusive project, but The Pittsburgh Anthology is a diverse, surprising, eloquent, playful, scrappy, and tenacious effort to capture one city’s “proud contradictions.” — Ploughshares
The Pittsburgh Anthology Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/PittsburghAnthology
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