Belt City Anthologies

Screw Capital of the World. Forest City. Home of the Rockford Peaches of A League of Their Own fame. Rockford, Illinois, has many identities, most oriented toward the past. These days, the fastener industry has mostly rusted away, the trees are less plentiful than they once were, and professional women’s baseball is no more. What defines Rockford today?

According to The Rockford Anthology, it’s the people. Those who grew up here, who came by choice or by circumstance, or who decided to leave. People who lost someone or found a voice or built community here.

In this installment of Belt’s City Anthology series, the people of Rockford represent themselves in essays, poetry, and photographs. Here, you’ll meet someone who found the space to start a business after leaving the crowd in Chicago. Academy Award–nominee Bing Liu takes you on a personal tour of his childhood houses and the ghosts that lurk there. A local attorney and activist shares how the city pushed back when ICE wanted to bring a detention center to Rockford. And you’ll learn why New York Times bestselling author Kimberla Lawson Roby, stand-up comedian Ashley Ray-Harris, and an introverted expat living in Taiwan always say they’re from Rockford . . . not Chicago. Whether through stories of growing up or chronicles of fights to make the city better, a sense of Rockford’s present—and future—starts to come into focus.

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.

A dazzling portrait of a Midwestern city whose relationships among socio-economics, religion, civil rights, and class are consistently complex. A part of Belt's City Anthology Series.

St. Louis is a fragmented place. It's physically dissected by rivers, highways, walls, and fences, but it's also a place where one's race, class, religion, and zip code may as well be cards in a rigged poker game, where the winners' prize is the ability to ignore the fact that the losers have drastically shorter life expectancies. But it can also be a city of warmth, love, and beauty―especially in its contrasts.

Edited by Ryan Schuessler (Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology from Middle America), the collection features nearly 70 essays penned by St. Louis writers, journalists, clerics, poets, and activists including Aisha Sultan, Galen Gritts, Vivian Gibson, Maja Sadikovic, Nartana Premachandra, Sophia Benoit, Robert Langellier, Samuel Autman, Umar Lee, and more. Here you'll learn about:

- The rent strike of 1969

- Religious life in Pruitt-Igoe public housing

- Protest art in Ferguson

- Segregation in the Vandeventer neighborhood

- A church closing in Kinloch.

The St. Louis Anthology dares to confront the city's nostalgia and its traumas, celebrating those who have faced both who live complex lives in this city against a backdrop of its red brick, muddy rivers, and sticky summer nights when the symphony of cicadas and jazz is almost loud enough to drown out the gunshots.

A perfect introduction to St. Louis for people who want to learn more about it and a great resource for those people from St. Louis who want to hear stories told by their own neighbors.

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.

The Youngstown story often is told with a beginning in iron and steel and ending in decay with a subplot driven by violent mobsters and corrupt politicians. Aiming to provide a more well-rounded examination of Youngstown, this collection of essays provides an authentic look at the city through a diverse set of experiences from the perspectives of those who have lived there. Readers will gain a sense of the past, present, and future of the city. Edited by Jacqueline Marino and Will Miller, the book features contributions by Christopher Barzak, Rochelle Hurt, Eric Murphy, Ed O’Neill, Sarah Sepanek, David Skolnick, Sarah Stankorb, C Lee Tressell, Jay Williams, Andrea Wood & 35 others.

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, a unique take on Charm City through the eyes of those who live there every day.To many outsiders, Baltimore--sometimes derisively called Mobtown or Bodymore--is a city famous for its poverty and violence, twin ills that have been compounded by decades of racial segregation and the loss of manufacturing jobs. But that portrait has only given us a skewed view of a truly unique and diverse American city, the place that produced Babe Ruth, Elijah Cummings, Nancy Pelosi, Edgar Allan Poe, John Waters, and Thurgood Marshall, and a city that's completely its own. In the over thirty-five essays, poems, and short stories collected here, the authors take an unfiltered look at the ins and outs of Baltimore's past and present. You'll hear about the first time an umbrella appeared in the Inner Harbor, nineteenth-century grave robbers, and the city's history with redlining and blockbusting. But you'll also get a deeper sense of what life is like in Baltimore today, including stories about urban gardening in Bolton Hill, the slow demise of local journalism, what life was like in the city during COVID, and the legacy of Freddie Gray. As Ron Kipling Williams writes in his essay about the city's magnetic appeal, Baltimore has always been a city worth fighting for, and running through all these essays is the story of Baltimore's resilience. From Pigtown to Pimlico, this anthology captures the sights, sounds, and feel of this city that so many people have come to discover is truly a lovely place, a fighting place, a charmer. Edited by Gary M. Almeter and Rafael Alvarez, this anthology offers an unfiltered look at Baltimore that will appeal to anyone looking for a portrait of an American city that's far more nuanced than the stories that are generally told about it.

Part of Belt's City Anthology Series. Absolutely one of the best books about Buffalo ever created.--Buffalo News

Buffalo, New York, sits atop a glorious history of power, disappointment, artistic flair, racial injustice, and spicy chicken wings--and all with Niagara Falls in its backyard. Told through the eyes of more than 65 artists, writers, and residents, the essays, poems, and photographs in Right Here, Right Now offer an unblinking, personal portrait of this often-overlooked city, both its good and bad sides. Edited by Jody K. Biehl, contributions from Wolf Blitzer, Lauren Belfer, Marv Levy, John Lombardo, Mary Ramsey, Robby Takac, and many more show why so many people love calling Buffalo home. Here, you'll encounter:

- Frederick Law Olmsted's impact on the city's early design

- The pain and joy of biking through Lake Effect snow

- Racism in a gentrifying city and city planning initiatives

- The rise and fall of the Buffalo mafia

- A trip to a Western New York meat raffle.

Touching on the meaning of home and how to find it, this collection offers an honest look at where Buffalo's been, where it is today, and where it may be going next.

An insiders' kaleidoscopic portrait of a messy, magnetic, and magical city.

A part of Belt's City Anthology Series. This collection is stimulating for insiders and outsiders alike, a portrait . . . designed to be from-the-streets, warts-and-all.--Pittsburgh City Paper

Pittsburgh is ever-changing--once dusted with soot from the mills, parts of the city now gleam with the polish of new technologies, and little remains of what had been there before. The essays and artwork in this anthology aim to capture the surprising, elusive stories that have come to define this city in transition. Editor Eric Boyd brings together over forty essays, poems, photographs, and artworks from Pittsburgh natives and transplants. In these pages, you'll find:

- LaToya Ruby Frazier, Portraits of Braddock by LaToya Ruby Frazier, MacArthur-award winning photographer

- Melanie Cox McCluskey on the Mt. Washington Monument

- Paintings of Steelers fans and the Jenkins Arcade

- 15-year-old Nico Chiod, chronicling 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.

A perfect collection for anyone looking for an insider's view of the City of Bridges, told by the people who live and work there. Or anyone looking for their first peek into one of America's most storied cities.

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 part of Belt's City Anthology Series, a unique take on the South Dakota town residents call the Best Little City in America.

In 1992, Money magazine named Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the best place to live in America. This rich anthology offers an inside look at the city through the eyes of both longtime residents and recent transplants. In over forty-five essays, you'll hear stories about the city's past, including the region's legacy of violence against Native Americans and Sioux Falls's status as a divorce destination in the late 1800s. But you'll also discover the ways the city's savvy planning and entrepreneurial gumption have helped it navigate twenty-first-century challenges. You'll read about: - the end of George McGovern's presidential run at a Sioux Falls Holiday Inn - the vibrant Jewish and Syrian-Muslim communities that helped form the city - the first sit-down strike in American labor history - firsthand accounts of how South Sudanese refugees are shaping the city today Edited by Patrick Hicks and Jon K. Lauck, City of Hustle: A Sioux Falls Anthology gives an insider's perspective on what's really going on in so-called flyover country, and it shows why that name misses so much of the true richness that makes up life there every day.

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.

While Grand Rapids, Michigan is known for large-scale events like ArtPrize; major businesses like Meijer, Steelcase, and Amway; and the philanthropic and political contributions of its wealthiest residents, there are hundreds--if not thousands--of grassroots activists working day-in and day-out to make Grand Rapids what it is. This collection seeks to raise the voices of those individuals and grassroots groups. The editors have joined forces to compile articles, poetry, and personal narratives about and by the grassroots activists of Grand Rapids. Edited by Ashley E. Nickels and Dani Vilella, in this collection, readers will find first-hand stories about:

- The lasting effects of discrimination in the city's Southeast community

- Disability advocacy and food justice

- Traversing the city on moped

- The furniture workers strike of 1911.

A complex portrait of an American city in transition and the tireless work of activists to make it a wonderful, just place to live.

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.

Part of Belt's City Anthology Series. The ultimate (literary) tour guide to the neighborhoods and wild places, history and politics, culture and cuisine, music and myths of the Twin Cities, a place I only thought I knew.--Benjamin Percy

In recent years, Minneapolis has become one of America's literary powerhouses. With over fifty poems and essays, Under Purple Skies: The Minneapolis Anthology collects some of the most exciting work being done in, or about, Minneapolis and the Twin Cities area, with narrative threads that stretch back not just to Scandinavia, but across the world.

Edited by Frank Bures (The Geography of Madness), the writers included here have won, or been shortlisted for, the Newbery Award, the Man Booker Prize, the Pulitzer, the Caldecott Award, the National Book Award, the Minnesota Book Award, and many others. The wide-ranging stories included here include:

- A tour through Prince's Minneapolis

- The story of the Metrodome's demolition

- A story of a Somali immigrant's journey to Eden Prairie

- Eating Halva on Lake Street.

Contributors include James Wright, Kelly Barnhill, Marlon James, Kao Kalia Yang, Michael Perry, Bao Phi, Danez Smith, Shannon Gibney and many more, alongside new and first-time writers.

A wonderful, literary portrait of the City of Lakes and the myriad ways it's changed in recent years.

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.