Rust Belt Magazine

11/14/2025

Through 12/31, matches all new monthly and one-time gifts, up to $1,000, and recurring monthly gifts are matched 12 times! Your $5/month gift unlocks $60 in matching funds – which goes straight to paying writers for their work! Can we count on you?

Give today:

Belt Magazine publishes the best writing, journalism, and photography by and for the Rust Belt and greater Midwest. And we can’t do any of it without supporters like you.

11/06/2025

This month at the magazine, we're sharing a selection of Rust Belt-oriented pieces recently published at our newly-launched sibling publication, the Pittsburgh Review of Books (PRoB).

PRoB isn't only focused on our region, but part of our mission is to introduce this region to the world (and vice versa).

Read about the father of the Pittsburgh School of Poetry, the great editor Ed Ochester, parse the metaphysics of Michigan in the poetry of Cal Freeman, and examine the left-wing murals of the Croatian social realist Maxo Vanka in Millvale, Pennsylvania.

November 2025By Ed Simon In the Venn Diagram that demonstrates the relationship between Rust Belt Magazine and The Pittsburgh [...]2025-11-06T12:48:11-05:00By Ed Simon|

10/06/2025

“A phrenological bust, an abandoned blast furnace, twin light-houses, a tree bedazzled in Spanish moss: each of the pictures – beguilingly mysterious as they were – gave every author an opportunity to consider what stories might lay just outside of the frame.”
A group of Pittsburgh writers recently convened in an historic space to share pieces created in response to the evocative photographs of Huck Beard. We’ll be sharing them this week, back from our hiatus, now publishing as Rust Belt Magazine.

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 and ten other authors at the historic Homestead Pump House in Munhall, Pennsylvania. Each of the gath...

08/20/2025

All Saints Parish has a special status within the Catholic church because of the massive collection of relics that adorn its walls, vestibules, and nooks.

07/01/2025

This September, Belt Magazine is getting both a make-over and a new partner in publication. Thanks to a grant from the Institute for Nonprofit News, Belt Magazine’s website will get a long overdue redesign, as well as a new logo. As part of that initiative, we’re going to be rebranding ourselves as well, returning to our roots as Rust Belt Magazine.

In that same month, the Pittsburgh Review of Books (or PRoB) will begin publishing intelligent cultural criticism and literary analysis intended for the reading public. A venture of the English Department at Carnegie Mellon University, PRoB will be a publication in the vein of other award-winning magazines and sites such as The Atlantic, Harpers, The New Yorker, The Believer, Literary Hub, and The Millions.

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

06/30/2025

A conversation between Bill Lychack and Sherrie Flick, in which the latter discusses the mystery of bears, the art of joy in writing and life, and her new collection of stories, “I Have Not Considered Consequences” (Autumn House Press, 2025)

https://beltmag.com/considering-consequences-with-sherrie-flick

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 House Press, 2025)

06/27/2025

“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.”

Read “Hymns & Hers” and three other poems by Kristofer Collins.

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 headstones to the lithe grass of new plots in Allegheny Cemetery not fifty steps from this

06/26/2025

“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.”

Read “Keweenaw County’s Echoes of Copper Mining” by Paul Gordon.

https://beltmag.com/keweenaw-countys-echoes-of-copper-mining

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.

06/23/2025

“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; Berniece, resolved to keep the piano and build a life for her daughter in Pittsburgh; Sutter’s ghost haunting the house, the family, the instrument, from the top of the stairs.”

Michael Bennett on the work of August Wilson.

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; Berniece, resolved to keep the piano and build a life for her daughter in Pittsburgh; Sutter’s gho...

06/20/2025

“Charles Goodyear
sowed as many seeds
as John Chapman
but he did it from the kitchen…”

Read “Goodyear & Chapman,” a poem by Jeffrey Nathan Marks.

A poem by Jeffrey Nathan Marks.

06/19/2025

“‘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 which Clemente played the game. His elegant movements in right field, his powerful swing glorified in stanzas, and his laser-like throws from the outfield demonstrated an athletic artistry that few players have matched.”

Read “The Sky Belongs to Him – Roberto Clemente’s Poetry” by Sarah Fleming Steinberg.

https://beltmag.com/the-sky-belongs-to-him-roberto-clementes-poetry/

"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 which Clemente played the game. His elegant movements in right field, his powerful swing glorified in

06/16/2025

“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 of both.”

Read “Onion Domes of the Anthracite” by Gavin Moulton.

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 of both.