The Rockford Anthology

Edited by Rachel León
October 21, 2025

Now available for pre-order!

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.

6 x 9 | Paperback | ISBN: 9781540270122

Advance Praise: 

"A city with ten nicknames isn’t simply beloved or hated—It’s a place that has survived more than one history, a town demanding its own redescription. The Screw Capital wears a Peaches sweatshirt. The Reaper City plays double Dutch, goes to Spanish mass on the east side. On Saturdays the Fastener Capital eats at Beef-a-Roo. The Rockford Anthology features the range of ache and well-earned glory in a city once voted America’s 'most miserable.' Isn’t every rusted door a kind of anthology? This book's pages collect the voices of people who stayed when 'success meant leaving,' and those who, with every sentence, are making their joyous return." —Sarah Minor, author of Slim Confessions