Rust Belt Magazine

Rust Belt Magazine is a digital publication by and for the Rust Belt and greater Midwest.

Founded in 2013 as an antidote to shallow, distorted representations of the region, we challenge simplistic national narratives by paying local journalists, writers, photographers, and poets to cover their communities with depth, context, and the kind of rich insight that can only come from a deep relationship with a place

Rust Belt Magazine’s editor-in-chief is Ed Simon who is a Public Humanities Special Faculty in the English Department of Carnegie Mellon University where the publication has been housed since 2024.