Belt City Anthologies

A part of Belt's City Anthology Series. A lively grab bag of essays, fiction and poetry that reads at times like a who's who of contemporary Chicago writers/residents.--The Chicago Tribune

Chicago is a city built on meat, railroads, and steel, on opportunity and exploitation. But its identity has long involved so much more than manufacturing. Today, the city continues to lure new residents from around the world, and from across a region rocked by recession and deindustrialization.

The problems that plague the region don't disappear once you pass the Indiana border, though. In fact, they're often amplified. And Chicago is a complicated city because of that, defined by movement that's the anchor of the Midwest, but bound to its neighbors by a shared ecosystem and economy.

Rust Belt Chicago collects essays, fiction, and poetry from more than fifty writers who speak directly to the concerns the city shares with the region at large, and the elements that set it apart. With contributions from writers like Aleksandar Hemon, Kathleen Rooney, and Zoe Zolbrod, and here you'll find stories about:

- Buying Bread on Devon Street

- The Cantinas of Pilsen

- Bike commutes through the North Side

- Adventures on the El.

Writing with affection, frustration, anger, and joy, the writers in this collection capture all the harmony and dissonance that define one cacophonous place.

A wide-ranging insider's look at one of the world's most iconic cities.

Part of Belt's city anthology series, a reconsideration of one of America's most misunderstood cities.

Is Indianapolis just another midwestern city to fly over on the way to bigger and better destinations? Or is it, as locals know, a place where different peoples and ideals converge to create a rich cultural center? The Indianapolis Anthology showcases Naptown's vibrancy and diversity with pieces from journalists, poets, historians, established community voices, and first-time writers. The Circle City is more than the home of the Indianapolis 500, John Dillinger, Kenneth Babyface Edmonds, Kurt Vonnegut, Prozac, and Wonder Bread. In these pages, you'll find:

- lawn chairs in the beds of pick-ups

- Punk rock in Naptown

- suffragists and entrepreneurs

- cement pietàs

- dog bakeries and yoga studios

- red brick bungalows and war memorials

- steakburgers and Mexican seafood; pho and sauerbraten.

In other words, you'll find images from a city that is truly a cross section of today's America. Edited by Norman Buzz Minnick and with contributions from Etheridge Knight, Terrance Hayes, Michael Martone, and Karen Kovacik.

An insiders' look that will make you see a great midwestern city in a brand-new light.

A part of Belt's City Anthology Series, A Detroit Anthology offers a unique take on the Motor City told by longtime residents and newcomers, including activists, teachers, artists, and students--a 2015 Michigan Notable Book.

People have long told stories about Detroit, but too often those stories are from outsiders looking in, telling the city what it's all about. In A Detroit Anthology, Anna Clark, a Detroit-based journalist for ProPublica, collects the kinds of stories about the Motor City that people tell at the bar, waiting at the bus stop, sitting on their porch, or at church social hours. Featuring essays, photographs, art, and poetry by Tyehimba Jess, Grace Lee Boggs, Aaron Foley, John Carlisle, Desiree Cooper, Dream Hampton, Tracie McMillan, and many others. The Millions describes it as a book that gives voice to people who now live or once lived in this fascinating, tortured place, the survivors, good people who know what pain is, people who understand that the city exerts an undying pull on them. The Detroit stories here might not all be glowing or gloomy, but they're 100% real.

A wide-ranging and diverse portrait of a city, perfect for those who want to get to know Detroit for the first time or for those native Detroiters who want a more candid look at the city they call home.

Part of Belt's City Anthology Series. A strong series of personal essays, historical exploration, nature writing, and photography. ... Love's anthology gathers [Gary's] resilience without shying away from the city's hard realities.―Chicago Review of Books

Once the second-largest city in Indiana, and home to the world's largest steel mill, Gary has suffered greatly in the postindustrial global economy. Population numbers now approach pre-Great Depression lows. Large swathes of its land are urban prairie, and a recent survey found a quarter of its built environment is in a dilapidated or dangerous condition. But Gary is also a national center of Black culture and political power. It is home to the Indiana Dunes National Park and globally rare ecosystems. Union, community organizing, and environmental justice struggles there have profoundly shaped social and political life in the United States.

Edited by Samuel A. Love, The Gary Anthology's contributors include essayists, poets, and journalists, but also graffiti writers, ministers, activists, organizers, and steel workers. Their insights into the city complicate our simplified narratives about violence and urban decay, offering readers the chance to hear from those who are reshaping the city from the bottom up.

A nuanced look of a city that is full of everyday joys and tragedies and a vibrant rebuke to stale notions that Gary is dead.

A part of Belt's City Anthology Series, The Dayton Anthology offers a portrait of a city recovering from the twin 2019 crises of devastating tornadoes and the mass shooting that took the lives of nine residents in the Oregon District.

In over fifty essays and poems, contributors reflect on these traumas and the longer-term ills of disinvestment and decay that have plagued Dayton and the Miami Valley for years. But they also draw our attention to the resilience of the people who call Dayton home. This is the city that brought the world the Wright brothers' invention of flight, the cash register, and the hydraulic pump. It also gave us the soaring poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the comedy of Dave Chappelle. Edited by Shannon Shelton Miller and with contributions from Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley and former Ohio Governor Bob Taft.

A delightful tour of a city that never counts itself out, that captures the true diversity of Dayton's residents.

A book that looks to stir emotions. It holds a lot of anger.--LEO Weekly. Part of Belt's City Anthology Series.

What is Louisville's identity in the twenty-first century? Is it the southernmost midwestern city, the midwestiest southern town, or somewhere in between? Living on the border of two regions creates a hybrid sensibility full of contradictions that can be difficult to articulate beyond from Louisville, not Kentucky. In this collection of evocative essays and poems by natives and transplants, The Louisville Anthology offers locals and visitors a closer look at compelling private and public spaces around town. It's an attempt to articulate what defines Louisville beyond its most recognized cultural exports. Edited by Erin Keene, editor-in-chief at Salon.com, this is a portrait of a city caught between onward and remember-when. Here, readers will encounter stories about:

- Louisville's early punk scene

- Life as a transplant in Butcherville

- A Trip to Cave Hill Cemetery

- A Trek to find Muhammad Ali's Louisville.

A perfect book for Louisville natives or for those looking for a more nuanced look at an often-stereotyped region of the country.

Part of Belt's City Anthology Series. [A] mosaic of a book.--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Milwaukee Anthology is a book about hope and hurt in one of America's toughest zip codes. In the essays, narratives, poems, and art included here, you won't find Summerfest or Laverne and Shirley, but you will find honest first-hand stories about Riverwest, Sherman Park, Hmong New Year's shows, 7 Mile Fair, and the Rolling Mill commemoration. Edited by Justin Kern, and with more than 50 contributors including Dasha Kelly, Pardeep Kaleka, and Michael Perry, this collection includes stories about:

- Redlining in the city

- Painting a community mural in Sherman Park

- Reflections after the Oak Creek Sikh Temple Shooting

- The city's upstart microbrewing industry

- The rise of Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks.

It's an anthology about a place on the lake that can make you say yes and wonder why in the same thought. A place that's both a big town and small city, run down and redeveloped, tararrel and terror.

A collection that shows the Cream City is much weirder and more wonderful than you may think it is.

A part of Belt's City Anthology Series, this collection explores Akron, Ohio's past and what may happen there in the future. A portrait of the city's rich, mysterious, odd-leaning inner life.

Between 1910 and 1920, Akron was the fastest growing city in the United States, tripling in size and exploding from a population of 69,000 to 208,000. Its period of rapid growth coincided with the expansion of the rubber and tire industry, which in turn corresponded with that of the automobile industry. But since the mid-1970s, industry has abandoned Akron, and the city has lost 31 percent of its population. Once opulent neighborhoods are now swaths of abandoned homes, and the factories that made Akron the Rubber Capital of the World lie dormant.

Edited by Jason Segedy, and bringing together established writers like Rita Dove and David Giffels with the work of emerging voices, The Akron Anthology collects essays, poems, and photographs from the writers, artists, and activists who call Akron home. Here you'll find stories that include:

- The diaries of a doorman

- The trials and triumphs of refugees who have relocated to the city

- A portrait of Jamie Stillman, world-renowned effects pedal manufacturer

- Archie the talking snowman.

Providing readers with diverse group of voices, this collection offers an intimate look at a storied Ohio city.

A part of Belt's City Anthology Series. These pieces . . . stand as proof of the determination and optimism of a city that just won't quit.

A collection of essays and personal narratives, Happy Anyway: A Flint Anthology captures a confounding, contradictory city, proving that Flint is far more than just an industrial town picking itself up after a big company has moved out or the site of a devastating public health crisis. The stories collected here delve into the actual lives taking place within the city―the crime, joblessness, homelessness, and hopelessness, but also the happiness and resilience. They are about who is able to truly lay claim to being from Flint and what it means to finally leave―or to stay, even when bikes, jewelry, or love continually disappear. From both established and new writers, you'll find stories here that include:

- Home ownership in Mott Park during the 2008 housing crisis

- The history and mysteries of Glenwood Cemetery

- What the Flint water crisis means for parents trying to raise young children.

Edited by Scott Atkinson, a former reporter for The Flint Journal, the 24 essays collected here shed new light on a city that has perpetually been defined by outsiders. As Atkinson notes, These are stories from the middle. They are stories of triumph not because anything has been won, but because they are stories of Flint's continued fight.

A candid, unflinching look inside a city whose history tells a truly American story.