Skip to product information
1 of 2

ISBN 9780997774375

Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology

Regular price $20.00 USD
Regular price $20.00 USD Sale price $20.00 USD
Sale Sold out
Style

Edited by Martha Bayne

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. 


Praise for Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology

“Writers like Stuart Dybek, Studs Terkel, Sandra Cisneros, Nelson Algren and Gwendolyn Brooks start to make up the city’s canon. They are required reading for every Chicagoan. But Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology, the neighborhood cookbook taking the pulse of post-industrial Chicago right now seems like required reading as well.” Emma Terhaar, Third Coast Review

“A lively grab bag of essays, fiction and poetry that reads at times like who’s who of contemporary Chicago writers/residents.” Chris Borrelli, Chicago Tribune

“One of the best books to come across my desk that I can frankly remember.” Rick Kogan, WGN Radio

"Within this collection of poems and prose lies a collection of voices and lives and pasts and presents. As told by those who run through Chicago’s veins and beat with its heart, the lens of the industrial Rust Belt pops this book’s blue collar, oozing working-class adoration and experience." -- Chicago summer book recommendation, American Writers Museum

___

Martha Bayne is a senior editor with Belt Publishing and a Chicago-based freelance writer. Her work has been published in regional and national outlets including Buzzfeed, Eater, the Chicago Reader, the Chicago Reporter, the Baffler, and Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism. She also the editor of Red State Blues: Stories from Midwestern Life on the Left and The Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook, both published by Belt, and the author of the narrative cookbook Soup & Bread Cookbook: Building Community One Pot at a Time (Agate, 2011).

Cover image by Tony Fitzpatrick, design by Sheila Sachs 

See also:

Chicago Bundle

City Anthology Bundle

  • Special Offers and Discounts

    Keep up with the newest title, sales, and events (plus the occasional meme) from Belt Publishing by signing up for our newsletter. It’s only once a week—no cluttering up your inbox.