Belt Publishing

“A deliriously creative tour-de-force … a breathtakingly imaginative and enjoyable novel." (Booklist, starred review)

It begins with a gunshot: a student's public suicide on a university campus. The blast radius of this tragic explosion expands to encompass 50 years of our history and two of the grandest characters in recent American fiction: Simon Magnus, a comic-book writer who transfigured popular culture turned gender activist who transfigures the English language, and Ash del Greco, an online occultist who by the age of 20 has seen to the end of everything and wants desperately to prove the superiority of mind over matter. With a decades-spanning but tightly-knit plot, written in an expansive style, Major Arcana canvasses America’s inner life and moral history from coast to coast and across two generations in a delirious saga about art, magic, love, and death. 

Originally serialized on the author’s Substack newsletter, Major Arcana is a novel about the transformative power of popular culture. With a nod to Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and for fans of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Pistelli reimagines the expansive novel for the 21st century. 

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.