“As with Joyce’s Dublin, place isn’t simply geographical–it is inherent in the working-class culture in which characters live. The tension remains across stories because it is, at root, based in econo...

“As with Joyce’s Dublin, place isn’t simply geographical–it is inherent in the working-class culture in which characters live. The tension remains across stories because it is, at root, based in econo...

Although the irony is not lost on us that the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday falls on the forty-seventh presidential inauguration, EbonNia and Black Palette Art Gallery provide beacons of communal lig...

Of course, the irony here is that 30 years ago, the Post-Gazette found itself in the midst of a similar strike. And it’s the only reason the Post-Gazette is still around today.

By Ed Simon As temperatures drop and the days get shorter, with the end of the year rapidly approaching, stay warm with some of the best Rust Belt themed writing published in conjunction between Rust ...

"I’ll never lose Wigilia because it’s not just a tradition; it’s a way of being."

By Ed Simon On an autumnal evening in mid-September of 2025, Carnegie Mellon University creative writing professor and accomplished novelist Sharon Dilworth convened a reading which included herself a...

The first printing-press in Pittsburgh was purchased by the aspiring newspaper editors John Scull and Joseph Hall from a manufacturer in Philadelphia; it took

The strike, which helped guide the UAW to prominence in the twentieth century, provides a blueprint for better working conditions and a revival of the middle class.

Belt Magazine Becomes Rust Belt Magazine While Getting a New Publishing Partner.

Belt Magazine Becomes Rust Belt Magazine While Getting a New Publishing Partner.

A conversation with Sherrie Flick, in which the author talks the mystery of bears, the art of joy in writing and life, and her new collections of stories, "I Have Not Considered Consequences" (Autumn ...

Hymns & Hers That’s how they mark the restroom doors here, Hymns and Hers. When I was a kid this bar was a funeral home. Prior that a foundry. Frank J. Boyle cut the marble here and delivered the head...

Hymns & Hers That’s how they mark the restroom doors here, Hymns and Hers. When I was a kid this bar was a funeral home. Prior that a foundry. Frank J. Boyle cut the marble here and delivered the head...

Keweenaw County, Michigan, once the heart of America’s copper mining industry, now stands as a quiet testament to the rise and fall of an industrial empire.

The more of Wilson’s plays I read, the more I appreciated The Piano Lesson for its stark symbols and robust characters: Boy Willie and his determination to buy the land his ancestors had slaved on; Be...

A poem by Jeffrey Nathan Marks.

"Baseball is poetry in motion." This phrase, one I use a lot, though it might elicit an arched eyebrow from those unfamiliar with the nuances of either pursuit, perfectly encapsulates the grace with w...

While the coal industry has come and gone, Slavic churches have remained a backbone of the community for over a century. They offer tranquility and craftsmanship in a world that is increasingly devoid...

A poem by Holly Day.

A poem by Holly Day.

For starters, we need to talk about suicide. We need to not be afraid to say the word “suicide,” because the word “suicide” will not kill anyone. We need to clean up societal problems that increase th...

the Parker Sub doesn't want those things. It likes simple. Plain. Which is why it's something a simple and plain man has to ask for. But I am a Parker. And I do want those: the pepper, the onions, the...

Still Life with Lake, Lighthouse, Canadian Wildfire Muskegon, MI The long low sweep of the beam on the lake like a sick child reaching, the smoke catching the light by its fragile throat, the light le...

"We can be of our region and communities while also being part of a larger thing—whether that be American poetry, university press publishing, or just publishing in general.”

It’s difficult to associate the Freudian couch with anything other than a New York shrink catering to that unique kind of neurosis that afflicts the upper-crust of the cosmopolitan metropole. However,...

i have skunk river Mary had Blackwater. i have Skunk River: swimming upstream in august; spook owls in october; all the farmers yearning arriving late and wet in november; and i have december too—this...

Saunders grew up in Pittsburgh’s Hill District and attended Saturday art classes at the very museum that houses his first major retrospective exhibition.

Frick’s rapidly growing art collection soon filled Clayton’s sumptuous interiors. Around 1895, his enhanced status at the Carnegie Company and developing acumen as an art collector led to an explosion...

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...

I now own four of his paintings, but this kind of stuffy collector language feels silly to use. People at his shows are always smiling, because it’s impossible to be art-gallery-serious around this wo...

Lucy’s is not a white savior story. It’s a complex story about Black emancipation and white allyship, and how in the fight for justice and equity, the best of intentions is absolutely necessary, but o...