Belt MIBA Catalog - 2024

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Ordering Information Included on the Back Page

About Belt Publishing

We founded Belt in 2013 to promote voices from the Rust Belt, and we have expanded our focus to include smart narrative and serious nonfiction on any topic, as well as commercial fiction with a regional foothold. In 2023 we were acquired by Arcadia Publishing, where we remain an independent imprint.

We are excited to tell overlooked stories, particularly those written by writers from underrepresented backgrounds and flown-over places We especially love books of cultural criticism, books with an urbanism theme or about progressive politics, smart histories that are not nostalgic, and those that "are hard to know where to shelve." We are drawn to scholarly research made plain. We publish everything from memoir to criticism, fiction, maps, and cookbooks.

We privilege strong writing above all Our authors make us who we are

Our titles have been longlisted for the PEN/Galbraith award for nonfiction, named “Best of the Year” by NPR and Publishers Weekly, and reviewed by the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, Harper’s, the New Yorker, the New Republic, and dozens of other outlets.

We value horizontal loyalty, writers over markets, the long game over the quick hit.

Our authors receive traditional publishing contracts and industry-standard royalties. Nordlyset handles our subrights.

What people are saying about Belt

"For the past five years, a small press called Belt Publishing has been bringing out intriguing nonfiction books about the Midwest; now they've started a new series called Belt Revivals to publish classic Midwestern fiction as well as nonfiction "

– Maureen Corrigan for Fresh Air

"Five years after its launch as a regional press specializing in nonfiction books about the industrial Midwest, Belt Publishing is growing rapidly and gaining visibility in the marketplace "

–Claire Kirch for Publishers Weekly

"Small presses across Appalachia and the Rust Belt consistently publish, to little fanfare, incredibly diverse work books that are lush, gritty, surprising and so very true Perhaps the best example, or certainly the best place to begin, is Catte’s “What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia.” This edgy, meticulous work of nonfiction from Cleveland’s Belt Publishing dispels many myths about the region."

–Leah Hampton for the Los Angeles Times

"This year, the Cleveland-based press looked to that region’s literary history for the Belt Revival series, a collection of new editions of Midwestern classics. Each book there are currently five is retrofitted with new introductions and arresting covers."

–Lovia Gyarkye for the New York Times Books Briefing

"Belt anthologies offer readers an opportunity to find stories and perspectives from their place, in which they may recognize themselves "

– Alastair Boone and Kriston Capps for CityLab.

"Belt Publishing promotes a kind of progressive Rust Belt pride without succumbing to cliché or hipster irony "

– Jennifer Schuessler for the New York Times

"In the past ten months, the question 'What happened?' has been asked of the Rust Belt more than ever before. But it’s the same question Belt has been answering for the past four years Has anyone had been listening?"

– Amanda Arnold for Lit Hub

"[Belt]...has served as a thoughtful foil to national-media characterizations of the region as either hopelessly dystopic or cheerfully rebounding, sticking instead to a knotty middle " – Christopher Borrelli for the Chicago Tribune

Belt Publishing Frontlist

Reading Arendt in the Waiting Room

Jonathan Foiles 9781953368836

$21.95 12.03.2024

Anxiety may be the defining feeling of our current era, and though it affects many people on a deeply personal level, the last few years have also witnessed the rise of more communal feelings of dread and unknowing, problems that sometimes seem too big to face. Will the United States remain a democracy? Can we still have meaningful lives amid the rubble of late capitalism and the inevitable creep of climate change? How do we even start to grapple with a problem so large it seems to pervade almost every corner of our lives?

In Reading Arendt in the Waiting Room, Jonathan Foiles, a licensed psychotherapist and lecturer at the University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, explains how philosophy can help us respond to these deep questions and communal worries about modern life. Read how Søren Kierkegaard can speak to feelings of helplessness in the face of police violence, how Hannah Arendt can help us rethink the seemingly unavoidable problem of a warming planet, and how social advocates like Jane Addams and Dorothy Day can offer hope and resolve in a world that sometimes seems like it’s already ended.

Thoughtful, discerning, personal, and accessible, Reading Arendt in the Waiting Room will serve as a concise companion for anyone looking to address our cultural unease and find new ways to face it together

Creative NonFiction

The Final Issue: The Best of Thirty Years of Creative Nonfiction Lee Gutkind 9781953368812

$28 00 11 05 2024

The very best writing from one of America’s most groundbreaking literary magazines.

When Creative Nonfiction debuted in 1994, the literary genre it championed was largely the target of skepticism or downright ridicule But at a time when few editors were interested in the personal essay, the magazine doggedly explored new ideas and fresh modes of expression, and over the next three decades, its contributors pioneered what would come to be known as the “fourth genre ”

The thirty-two essays collected here bring together some of the finest work Creative Nonfiction published over its seventy-eight issues. Read Pulitzer Prizewinner Charles Simic’s boyhood remembrances of the bombing of Belgrade, Carolyn Forche’s haunting, lyric catalog of her daily life as she faced down a cancer diagnosis, and John Edgar Wideman’s meditation on the photo of a murdered boy his same age Emmitt Till and how the image haunted him forever. Here, you'll find work by such luminaries as Adrienne Rich and John McPhee, but also essays from more contemporary voices like Brian Broome, Elizabeth Fortescue, and Anne McGrath.

With an introduction by Lee Gutkind, Creative Nonfiction’s founder and editor, this collection captures the evolution of a genre and the amazing work of the little magazine that helped make it all happen.

Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA

Patty Heyda 9781955474078

$35.00

8.06.2024

Ferguson, Missouri, became the epicenter of America’s racial tensions after the 2014 murder of Michael Brown and the protests that followed in its wake Though this suburb just outside St Louis might have seemed like an average midwestern town, the activism that exploded there after Brown’s killing laid bare how longstanding municipal planning policies had led to racial segregation, fragmentation, poverty, and police targeting

In over one hundred maps, Patty Heyda charts the systemic forces that have defined Ferguson, and the first-ring suburb in America more broadly. Through an in-depth look at the contradictions undergirding city planning and design, it illuminates how tax incentives, housing codes, urban design, policing, philanthropy, and even landscaping often work against the betterment of residents’ lives. At its heart lies a key question: Just who are our cities being built for?

A profound rethinking of what maps can be, Radical Atlas of Ferguson USA will challenge city planners, designers, and everyday citizens to change their perspective of public space.

Hannibal’s Invisibles

G Faye Dant

9781953368768

$28 00

6 25 2024

With over a hundred photos collected by G. Faye Dant, and with an introduction by renowned Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin.

When Mark Twain published Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885, he turned Hannibal, Missouri, into one of the most famous towns in the American imagination. But like Twain’s novel, Hannibal’s idyllic façade often elided the darker racial violence that had marked its past, and it overlooked the history and humanity of the Black residents who have called Hannibal home for generations. Without them, there would be no “America’s hometown.”

In Hannibal’s Invisibles, G. Faye Dant, a Hannibal resident and the executive director of Jim’s Journey: The Huck Finn Freedom Center, tells the incredible story of the Black community in this small Missouri town, giving voice to a history that has been marginalized far too long Hear first-hand accounts from those who survived enslavement, faced racism after emancipation, endured Jim Crow, and contributed to the triumphs of the civil rights movement. These are the stories of Black doctors, entrepreneurs, and teachers who helped uplift the community, and remembrances of the countless individuals who gave richness and meaning to Hannibal’s everyday life The vintage photographs and historical documents collected here are a celebration of these resilient people who built and sustained this corner of the Midwest, despite the immense obstacles they met at every turn

Chicago House Music

Marguerite L. Harrold

9781953368737

$24.00

8 13 2024

An inside look at the music born, bred, and perfected in Chicago

Chicago house music originated in the city’s Black, gay underground in the late seventies and became one of the most popular musical genres in the world by the end of the century In Chicago House Music: Culture and Community, Marguerite Harrold tells the story of the genre’s rise and the prolific creators who have sustained it for decades. You’ll learn about house music’s early innovators, like Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles, who transformed the social and political turmoil around them into a revolution in dance music You’ll also hear remembrances from contemporary figures in the house community, like DJ Lady D, Avery R Young, Czboogie and Edgar “Artek” Sinio, who have forged new paths as the genre has evolved. It’s a story about much more than music it’s about a community struggling for acceptance, love, liberation, and freedom, and about the creative pioneers whose resilience helped turn house music into a worldwide phenomenon

Full of interviews and first-hand accounts from the people who stood behind the turntables, carried crates of records, or danced until dawn, Chicago House Music is the history of an art form that continues to be a force for social interaction, spiritual liberation, and community today.

Midwest Shreds

Mandy Shunnarah

9781953368713

$24.00

7.16.2024

A guided tour of one of the Midwest’s most vibrant subcultures, one DIY ramp at a time.

The American Midwest may not have a reputation as the nation’s skating mecca, but maybe it should In Midwest Shreds, Mandy Shunnarah travels around the region for a deep dive into its skating culture, detailing the activity’s long, storied history there and the large and diverse skating community that calls the Midwest home today Here, you’ll learn how skating has become a form of mutual aid in Iowa, follow hard-core street skaters as they vie to become King of Cleveland, experience the transcendence of skating in a converted St. Louis cathedral, meet the anarchists who’ve built their own skate paradise, cinder block by cinder block, in southern Ohio, and encounter skaters from Des Moines, Madison, Chicago, West Lafayette, Detroit, and other corners of the Midwest

With writing that revels in the crunching scrape of hard wheels, the joy of nailing a trick for the first time, and the grit required to fall and get back up again, Midwest Shreds illuminates a small corner of Midwest life and offers a portrait of the rich cultural history and diversity that makes the region what it is today

Best of the Rust Belt

Edited by Anne Trubek

9781953368706

$19 99

7 02 2024

The best personal essays from a contested region, from Belt Publishing’s ten years as a press

Many have an opinion on what the Rust Belt is. It’s the "blue wall," "Trump country," the "flyover states," or the “real America ” Or maybe, as our own president has said, it's a place that no longer exists called by a name that has long outlived its usefulness But undeniably, there’s something that connects the region. Maybe the question isn’t what defines that connection, but who.

Over the past ten years, Belt Publishing has been putting out books that prioritize the voices of the many people who live here We’ve collected our favorite writing from our dozens of anthologies, from Pittsburgh to Gary, Chicago to St. Louis, Milwaukee to Cleveland, and more, documenting growing up in segregated St. Louis and elucidating the coded Islamophobia of southern Michigan. Featuring LaToya Ruby Frazier, Connie Schultz, Brian Broome, Megan Stielstra, Vivian Gibson, Aaron Foley, Kathleen Rooney, Sarah Kendzior, Phil Christman, and more

Local Titles

Illinois

Chicago House Music, Marguerite L. Harrold, 9781953368737, $24.00

Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook, by Martha Bayne, 9781948742498, $24.00

Conspiracy to Riot: The Life and Times of One of the Chicago 7, by Lee Weiner, 9781953368225, $16.95

Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology, Edited by Martha Bayne, 9780997774375, $20.00

The Battle of Lincoln Park: Urban Renewal and Gentrification in Chicago, by Daniel Kay Hertz, 9781948742092, $19.95

This City Is Killing Me: Community Trauma and Toxic Stress in Urban America, by Jonathan Foiles, 9781948742474, $16.95

Michigan

The Minotaur at Calle Lanza, by Zito Madu, 9781953368669, $19.95

Boys Come First, by Aaron Foley, 9781953368256, $21.95

How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass, 2nd Edition, By Aaron Foley, 9781948742313, $20.00

A Detroit Anthology, Edited by Anna Clark, 9780985944148, $20.00

A Pandemic in Residence: Essays From a Detroit Hospital, Selina Mahmood, 9781948742931, $16.95 Detroit in 50 Maps, by Alex B Hill, 9781953368027, $30.00

Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook, Edited by Aaron Foley, 9780998904139, $20.00

Standpipe: Delivering Water in Flint, by David Hardin, 9781948742825, $16.95

Happy Anyway: A Flint Anthology, Edited by Scott Atkinson, 9780996836715, $19.99

Grand Rapids Grassroots: An Anthology, Ashley E Nickels, 9780998018829, $20 00

Minnesota

Under Purple Skies: The Minneapolis Anthology, by Frank Bures, 9781948742436, $20.00

Missouri

Hannibal’s Invisibles, by G. Faye Dant, 9781953368768, $28.00

Radical Atlas of Ferguson, USA, by Patty Heyda, 9781955474078, $35.00

The Last Children of Mill Creek, by Vivian Gibson, 9781948742641, $18.95

The St. Louis Anthology, by Ryan Schuessler, 9781948742443, $20.00

Nebraska

One of Ours, by Willa Cather, 9781948742535, $14.95

South Dakota

City of Hustle: A Sioux Falls Anthology, by Patrick Hicks, 9781953368355, $26.00

Hamlin Garland, 9781948742030, $14.95 , by Justin Kern, 9781948742382, $20.00

View Additional Titles from Belt Publishing by scanning the QR Code or by clicking here.

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