Belt Magazine

09/02/2024

“Few exhibitions would be more appropriate for me to walk past on my way to work than the Demarest Metals, a reminder that Belt Magazine is grounded in the history – and the future – of this region, that labor deserves to be honored, that there are complicated, beautiful, and essential stories being written about and by people in areas too often passed over.” - Ed Simon

https://beltmag.com/carnegie-mellons-demarest-metals-and-belt-magazine

Few exhibitions would be more appropriate for me to walk past on my way to work than the Demarest Metals, a reminder that Belt Magazine is grounded in the history – and the future – of this region, that labor deserves to be honored, that there are complicated, beautiful, and essential stories be...

08/26/2024

Back from our summer hiatus, we’re ready to keep shining a light on the major topics facing our region – now, in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University. Read more from our Editor-in-Chief, Ed Simon, here:

Cantini, who was a vital part of Pittsburgh’s public art scene in the twentieth century, believed art should be free and available to everyone. Read More. 

08/01/2024

Order your copy at our site! https://beltmag.com/product/dispatches-from-the-rust-belt-the-best-of-belt-magazine-2020/

Proud to be one of the dispatchers from the Rust Belt in this beautiful new book. Congrats to Ed Simon and Belt Magazine. On with the work!
— with Belt Magazine.

06/29/2024

The pace of life changes in the summer – and we’re going on a two-month hiatus for July and August before announcing some exciting updates.

Catch up on your reading with our selection of some of the last year’s most compelling stories!

Fifteen of our favorites for our summer hiatus.

06/27/2024

“Now there’s a ubiquitous phrase on the Plains: we excel at ‘putting down roots’…Growing up in there is quite the opposite idea. Less so roots and more so treacherous vines.”

Read “The Common Prayer of Immoderate Soils” by Jeromiah Taylor.

Now there's an ubiquitous phrase on the Plains: we excel at "putting down roots"...Growing up in Kansas there is quite the opposite idea. Less so roots and more so treacherous vines.

06/26/2024

Congratulations to Jolene McIlwain, a fine chronicler of life in our region, whose story “Eminent Domain,” which we published last year, was just selected for inclusion in THE BEST SMALL FICTIONS 2024!

Read it here: https://beltmag.com/three-short-stories-from-sidle-creek/

Overview and guidelines for the Best Small Fictions annual series, published by Alternating Current Press.

06/25/2024

“Aguirre was motivated to get involved locally and feels her time at Carnegie Mellon in the School of Architecture paved the way. ‘The city was my campus.‘“

Tracy Certo interviews architect Lucia Aguirre on her journey to becoming a Pittsburgher. This story is part of The New Americans, a project of Pittsburgh Tomorrow, which seeks to reverse population loss through revitalization.

She was motivated to get involved locally and feels her time at Carnegie Mellon in the School of Architecture paved the way. “The city was my campus.”

06/20/2024

“By focusing the workers through his own craft and virtuosity, Thompson has created a beautiful record that is lamentation and resistance, history and hymn.”

Jody DiPerna on Raymond Thompson Jr.’s APPALACHIAN GHOST (University Press of Kentucky), in a story originally published by the Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.

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 a...

06/17/2024

“John was unbelievable with a trash bag. He threw the lighter ones from his hip, like an uppercut. The heavier bags were more like a hammer throw. You could tell he was accustomed to using, and needing to use, all the muscle he had left.”

Read “Garbage Boy” by Jake Maynard, whose debut novel SLIME LINE is out now from West Virginia University Press.

John was unbelievable with a trash bag. He threw the lighter ones from his hip, like an uppercut. The heavier bags were more like a hammer throw. You could tell he was accustomed to using, and needing to use, all the muscle he had left.

06/08/2024

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in 1867. Read about one of his early projects in Chicago, here, in this story from our archive: https://beltmag.com/frank-lloyd-wright-affordable-housing-chicago

American System-Built Homes in Chicago (and elsewhere).

06/06/2024

“I didn’t have much exposure to history or culture within my formal education. I now see this is an aspect of the oppression LGBTQ people face.”

In this archival story, Jeffry J. Iovannone describes working to capture and share the q***r history of Buffalo, NY. https://beltmag.com/madeline-davis-rust-belt-q***r-history-buffalo/

Davis, who died last month at the age of eighty, dedicated her life to LGBTQ+ history in Buffalo.

05/31/2024

“If you lived up here, you’d know what it was. It’s all anyone talks about. You’re either for it: it’s going to create jobs. Or you’re against it: it’s bad for the environment. No one’s neutral.”

05/31/2024

Did you catch our excerpt from Sharon Dilworth's new novel TO BE MARQUETTE? In a new interview up at Littsburgh, Sharon talks about how her time as a student in Northern Michigan informed the writing of this book. https://www.littsburgh.com/qa-sharon-dilworth-pittsburgh-author-of-to-be-marquette-with-jen-bannan/

“If you lived up here, you’d know what it was. It’s all anyone talks about. You’re either for it: it’s going to create jobs. Or you’re against it: it’s bad for the environment. No one’s neutral.”

05/31/2024

For almost a decade, Belt Magazine has published reporting and essays that are of the Rust Belt, by the Rust Belt, and for the Rust Belt. In a year that saw the continuing coronavirus pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the midterm elections, and the growing devastations of climate change, Belt has been t

05/29/2024

Will your plans take you to ? The state’s long tradition of show skiing is a spectacle worth seeing. S. Nicole Lane shares the history and some of the major players.

From pyramids to barefooting, water ski clubs have been a Wisconsin family tradition for sixty years.

05/23/2024

From the archives: One writer’s Memorial Day quest to discover his ancestors—and their final resting place. By Bob Zeni.

One writer's Memorial Day quest to discover his ancestors—and their final resting place.

05/22/2024

We're proud to be a member of the Pittsburgh Media Partnership, housed at the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University.

In September, the CMI will host Newsapalooza, a series of enlightening sessions, discussions, and hands-on media-making activities with national and local experts.

05/21/2024

From the archives: in 2021, retired Army Lt. Col. Barnard Kemter was silenced when trying to speak about the lesser-known origins of Memorial Day – specifically, the formerly enslaved Black Americans who, after the Civil War, honored deceased Union soldiers by giving them proper burials. Read his story here.

A recent event highlights the messiness of the town’s white-dominated abolitionist narrative.

05/20/2024

Those in or near Pittsburgh can hear Dave Newman read his work this Saturday, May 25, at the Oddmonth Poetry Series, at Bantha Tea Bar at 7 p.m. https://facebook.com/events/s/oddmonth-poetry-reading-stefan/455135140313972/

For many working-class folks, the job can become an integral part of who they are, a reason to be. Yet when pressed to share his views on jobs as identity, Newman cuts against the grain, saying “I try to separate the idea of work and jobbing. Jobbing is what most of us do to pay the bills. Work is

05/13/2024

"Yet part of what defines Pittsburgh literature is the mystical kernel of something beyond mere matter that animates any consideration of this place: the transcendent in the prosaic, the sacred in the profane."

An excerpt from THE SOUL OF PITTSBURGH: ESSAYS ON LIFE, COMMUNITY AND HISTORY by Ed Simon and released by Arcadia Publishing.

Yet part of what defines the Pittsburgh School, from Brackenridge onward, is the mystical kernel of something beyond mere matter that animates any consideration of this place: the transcendent in the prosaic, the sacred in the profane. An intimation of beauty amid a kingdom of ugliness.

05/09/2024

“The fire is unconcerned by my conclusions, and yours, and the ones a hundred years from now. It burns, and smolders, and returns stronger than ever.”

Eric D. Lehman on the perpetual burning of , PA.

Centralia became an attraction for both horror movie fans and ordinary people fascinated by the story.

05/06/2024

“I didn’t say, as they told me how they owned a boat and spent much of their summer cruising Maine’s coastline, that my mother’s biggest dream was to get out of West Virginia, that her biggest love was the ocean, that she hoped to die listening to the sounds of the waves.”

Read an excerpt from NO SON OF MINE by Jonathan Corcoran, just out from the University Press of Kentucky.

I didn’t say, as they told me how they owned a boat and spent much of their summer cruising Maine’s coastline, that my mother’s biggest dream was to get out of West Virginia, that her biggest love was the ocean, that she hoped to die listening to the sounds of the waves.

05/02/2024

“These old haunts get older
and pace from town to town,
glaciers receding, complete
with yards of unraked leaves,

curbside trash bins smelling
of broiled muskeye…”

Three new poems by Indiana poet Jacob Schepers.

By Jacob Schepers The Creeping Gait These old haunts get older and pace from town to town, glaciers receding, complete with yards of unraked leaves, curbside trash bins smelling of broiled muskeye, streetlamps and their burnt-out bulbs These crippled haunts hobble down dark alleys

04/29/2024

“May Day isn’t just an estimably American holiday, it’s a particularly 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.”

Editor Ed Simon looks to the origins of the observation of .

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.

04/25/2024

"Would a return to my hometown after 20 years in and around New York prove the perfect move for a mom determined to say 'yes' and kindle community? Here’s how it went for me."

Guest essayist Molly Campe tells her story, in a piece shared with the permission of PublicSource.

Would a return to my hometown after 20 years in and around New York prove the perfect move for a mom determined to say “yes” and kindle community? Here’s how it went for me.

04/22/2024

“Vinton, Ohio on a December day, 2021,” a new poem by poet Keri Johnson.

A poem by Keri Johnson.

04/18/2024

”Kent follows the pattern of Rust Belt city decline with recovery, including a focus on sustainability. Edible Kent fits in the framework of moving toward sustainability while also addressing economic needs for low-income folks, while the city’s economic recovery and development strategy has been so focused on gentrification that one could call its view of sustainability anti-poor.”

Read this excerpt, by Lis Regula and MJ Eckhouse, from the University Press of Kentucky book DEVIANT HOLLERS.

Kent follows the pattern of Rust Belt city decline with recovery, including a focus on sustainability. Edible Kent fits in the framework of moving toward sustainability while also addressing economic needs for low-income folks, while the city’s economic recovery and development strategy has been s...