reading – Rust Belt Girl

Posted on June 20, 2026 by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 2 Comments

“Ohio is a green world glazed”: An essay-review of the novels of Anesa Miller

Maybe each generation has its gaze.

If the Boomers looked outward and upward, Gen X-ers looked inward. Millennials examined the male gaze, the feminine gaze, the queer gaze. And, lately, Generation Z is perfecting the Gen Z stare. There are memes aplenty, but basically the Zoomer’s stare is an unblinking, powerfully defiant straight-in-the-eye gaze, less glare and more disaffected showdown. (I know it well—I have teens.) It’s a staring contest of disdain that flies in the face of the lowered-eyed, modest, “demure” vibe of 2024. In response to the Gen Z stare, the trad-fluencers—those pop culture paragons of all that is modest and retiring—would, indeed, demure. (Or pretend to.)

I’ve begun to consider the Gen Z stare as a kind of protest—particularly when employed by young women. I thought of this as I read the novels of Anesa Miller, an Ohio writer “exploring the lives of Midwestern white women in our polarized era,” according to her Instagram profile. Her second novel, I Never Do This (Sibylline Press, 2024) is set in modern-day small-town southern Ohio, and in rural Missouri. Here’s a taste of Miller’s description of the Ohio setting:

September in southern Ohio is a green world glazed in sun-honey wrapped in sweet air. Nothing had been touched by fall so far, but every color filled my eyes like something fresh from the day of creation. We were in flat country along that road. Deep-green trees lined the horizon, and the bean field across the way glowed ripe and tawny with yellow butterflies fitting over top. The sky cupped everything in its bottomless dome. A caravan of clouds drifted by real slow to the south, so blinding white I could hardly keep my eyes on their shifting shapes—

Rather than a coastal story that reads New York City gritty or Los Angeles sunny, Miller’s story feels decidedly Midwestern, the nuances of a place intent on establishing its personality, however contradictory—fiercely independent and forever loyal, traditional and broadminded, honest but (of course) nice. What’s freeing about writing from a, say, Ohio setting is that there isn’t a fixed archetype. After all, Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg Ohio, often lauded as the Ohio novel is barely more than 100 years old—and what’s a century when talking literature?

What is Ohio literature? What is an Ohio novel? These are questions Miller has asked herself. Her own two novels begin to answer these questions.

Our first-person main character in I Never Do This, 27-year-old LaDene Faye Howell tells her story in a page-turner of a (nearly 200-page) novel written as a monologue delivered to the police who are holding her in custody. LaDene confesses the details of the crime spree she engaged in with her paroled cousin Bobbie, and at the same time she reveals the pivotal secret of her past. The dual mystery twists and turns as she unwinds it in the telling, but the pacing never stalls. Our narrator’s voice is a fierce and fiery one.

Setting the scene of her Ohio upbringing, LaDene describes her clashing ancestors, the Twist-Howells: the Revolutionary War-era Howell line, who made their early fortune by establishing the area’s first ferry crossing; meets the Twist line, who made their way in the world through “scale-tipping, tax-dodging, all kinds of scamming, gambling. That’s what they get up to,” she says. “And by all accounts, they’re not one bit ashamed of it.”

I’m reminded of that famous warring family, the Hatfield-McCoys, and of the joke map of Ohio that circulates on social media, which labels the state (going counterclockwise from the northwest): “corn, The South, West Virginia, and Hillbillies.”

While LaDene is no hillbilly, she was not savvy enough at just 15 years old to get out from under her father’s performative-religious thumb before she gets “in trouble,” as we might have called an unplanned teen pregnancy when we were growing up. Of her secret past, LaDene describes being swiftly sent by her parents to a home for girls in the Kansas City hinterlands to wait out her pregnancy with other girls like her, girls from religious families embarrassed by a daughter’s mistake. Upon arrival at the home, LaDene dons the modest uniform of drab top and calf-length denim skirt and learns the ground rules. Among many other constraints: “We were especially not allowed to chat idly with each other, speak without permission, talk back to elders, look anyone in the eye unless so instructed…” To meet someone’s eye would have been a sign of disrespect, she tells the reader.

The U.S. did not have Magdalene Laundries, brought to our literary attention by Claire Keegan’s bestselling novel Small Things Like These, in the way that Ireland did. Indeed, the Catholic Church in Ireland kept thousands of girls in work camp-like conditions through their pregnancies; while the Irish story retold by Keegan as fiction—a story set in 1985—feels archaic, it is not (unless you yourself are Gen Z.) Likewise, reading Miller’s novel, it would be easy to dismiss such a tale as not of our time or place—culturally irrelevant. Surely this is someone else’s Midwest! But it is not, and you know what they say about history. What’s more, if the “trad” movement that has flooded my Instagram feed and my Catholic church pew of late has taught me anything, it’s that history repeats itself if we’re not careful. And everything old—whether better or worse—can be made new again.

Just take “demure.” Rather than being relegated to times gone by, demure had its own social media moment only a year or two in our rear view. What started as a joke meme took off, and young women were encouraged by influencers to be modest, reserved, mindful. The religious trad wife set took the demure trend to heart, adding the vibe to their already-restrictive aesthetic, and bowing even lower to the male gaze—whether from husbands, fathers, or religious. Heaven forbid (quite literally) we meet his eye.

Miller’s women characters are products of their time, place, and upbringing and are expertly—and lovingly—drawn. While these young women don’t overthrow the systems of power, neither do they bow to them for long. They are forever changed by the patriarchal society that would keep them down, yet they do surface. They also remain loyal to their places and people, however flawed. In this, the novels’ narratives feel true-to-life—and very, well, Midwestern.

Miller’s debut novel, Our Orbit (Sibylline Digital First, 2024) is a multi-voiced novel that shines a light on a culture of guns, God, and tax evasion in Appalachian Ohio. The plot explodes out of the gate with the jailing of a father that sends nine-year-old Miriam Winslow to live with a foster family. Raised in a strictly religious home—one that abided by an evangelical purity code that demands that sinners must repent in dramatic acts of remorse—Miriam struggles to adapt to a more secular, mainstream culture. At the same time, her teenage sister Rachelle struggles to define for herself what womanhood will mean. All the while, their antagonist brother, teenaged Josh, aims to bring both sisters back into his destructive fold.

He is at once a mouthpiece for his jailed father and for the father in Heaven he purports to follow. He is a potent symbol of patriarchy’s power to void young people of agency—women and men alike. In scripture-laden language, he expresses his destructive frustration at his failure in becoming the authoritarian his father was:

Not a bird falls from the nest, Josh thought, unless my Father wills it … So there has to be a reason … The water was so high, why couldn’t it rise a little higher? One more heavy rain and the creek could flood the park, wash out the county roads, add its torrent to the Ohio River. It might not be so bad to see the world swept away with all its troubles.

Still, Miller refrains from naming good and evil in the characters she’s created. The propulsive story makes use of multiple perspectives that work to provide a multi-faceted view of lives straddling tradition and modernity, religion and the secular world, and the myriad ways we engage with others in love. (How vital to see young characters wrestling with love beyond the romantic!) In doing so, Miller creates an empathetic and memorable story that rings as true today as it might have a hundred years ago.

There are no simple plotlines and no easy answers—nothing that can be boiled down into a social media soundbite. There is searching. Late in Our Orbit, Rachelle muses on her emotions as she stands at the cusp of womanhood, what was “supposed to be the most important and mysterious event of a girl’s existence”: romantic love and sex. But perhaps what’s more important than the character’s rumination is that she allows herself the time and space for it: “The great thing about art class is that dreaming is permitted,” she thinks to herself, “… her eyes gazed out the window, her thoughts somewhere else.”

Through well-told, dynamic stories of family, tradition, faith—and self-love that flourishes outside scripture or strictures—Miller provides a window onto hope. All we need to do is gaze through it.

By Rebecca Moon Ruark

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Posted on March 18, 2026March 18, 2026 by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 5 Comments

“These Fragments I Have Shored”: No Saints, No Martyrs: A review

By Emily Harris

Refusing to bog itself down in any medical jargon or victimhood, Jason Irwin’s memoir “These Fragments I Have Shored” offers 265 pages of grief-writing that are as funny as they are unsparing. Irwin’s May 5, 2026, release is a memoir essay collection in accordance with his experience as caretaker for his mother over the last stretch of her life. With humor and humility, Irwin weaves two medical histories, placing his 1980s childhood—one spent in and out of surgeries, an ostomy bag fastened to his abdomen—in conversation with his mother’s cancer diagnosis nearly 40 years later. Not so much a chronology of illness but rather a family portrait of dysfunction, bodily decline and a mother-son relationship defined by mutual stubbornness.

It is Irwin’s refusal to stall in the dense medical digressions that allows him to move quickly from his own birth to his youth, all the way through his marriage and the death of his mother. His brevity is buoyed by a voice that feels conversational and cynical, without being glib. His pacing reflects the experience of chronic illness and its whiplash of appointments, argument and gallows humor.

Isolated and bullied for his surgical deformities, the sections of his childhood are vivid. But even in the passages of suffering, levity surfaces. In one tender anecdote, we learn of his childhood best friend Jojo, memorably described as “a phantom plucked from darkness.” The troublemaker with a good heart, the neighborhood delinquent who befriends and also protects Irwin, described as “threatening to kill anyone who made fun of my brace, the way I walked, or questioned why, at age twelve, my bicycle still had training wheels.” Inclusions such as Jojo render a whole image of instability—it can be destructive, but not without being formative.

In one devastating episode, a classmate punches Irwin’s ostomy bag. But the humiliation comes through plainly, without attempts of swelling authenticity. Not interested in being a victim, nor dignifying his younger self, Irwin details the destructive bravado of high school. He admits to drinking as a performance of toughness among many moments of cruelty. He confesses to his own actions as a bully, acknowledging, “I knocked books out of upper classmates’ hands as they walked the halls and made fun of those students I knew were weaker than me, like Ezra, a refugee from Central America, and Tammy, who chased after pennies I threw at her.” It’s here where the memoir’s humility lies and Irwin does not paint himself any kinder than he was. He calls it what it was: insecurity, and his candor is refreshing.

He approaches his deceased mother with the same clarity, depicting a woman with personhood rather than an archetype of maternal failure. Sixteen years after discovering a tumor in her nose, the cancer eventually spread to her bones, killing her just after her 75th birthday. We see her resist medical advice, refuse to stop smoking and grow petulant in doctors’ offices. In it, Irwin lets her read as irritable, even unpleasant, and we witness her unraveling along with him; from snide to exhausted, from a sick woman to a dying one. But, crucially, Irwin restores her to a fullness that posthumous portraits of motherhood tend to flatten. He shows us the mistakes she made, but also her agency: the late-in-life decision to enroll in college to study creative writing, her curt candor in the face of growing weakness. When her old friends try to reconcile with her upon her diagnosis, she dismisses it: “Fuck ‘em. If they can’t visit me while I’m healthy and alive, I don’t want them looking at my body when I’m dead, crying their fake tears.” She does not get reduced to the dying parent. Evidently, she was difficult. But Irwin makes sure we know she was a full person too.

Finally, Irwin gives us a self-referential depiction of being a creative. The fear of inadequacy and the suspicious longevity of art as a career is embedded in Irwin’s prose. The effect is intimate and locates Irwin among writers: “Sometimes I wondered if I was in over my head. Was I really a poet, I wondered.” Irwin struggles; he drinks; he creates. He falters and he keeps writing.

Irwin resists the manufactured epiphany. The memoir closes on a quiet image of his mother, still instructing him in how to endure. It is appropriate and true to the book’s spirit.

Emily Harris is a senior at the University of Pittsburgh studying History and Nonfiction Writing. She is Copy Chief at The Pitt News and has written criticism on contemporary memoir, narrative craft, and literary nonfiction.

These Fragments I Have Shored: A Memoir

By Jason Irwin

Apprentice House Press, pre-order $31.68 / $21.43

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Posted on December 27, 2025December 27, 2025 by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 14 Comments

Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake, and playing God in our life stories:

Image of cover of Ann Patchett's novel Tom Lake

I am a writer who loves story—and homework. I’m sure I’m not alone there. So, before I sat down to read—or more specifically listen to Meryl Streep read—Ann Patchett’s most recent novel, Tom Lake, I watched Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town, which features quite a bit in Patchett’s story. I caught the excellent PBS “Great Performances” production from the 1980s featuring Spaulding Gray as the narrating stage manager, a young Penelope Ann Miller as Emily Webb, and Eric Stolz (swoon) as George Gibbs, her love interest.

Tom Lake, then, is a story about a story about telling stories—or, the act of dramatic portrayal. Lights, camera, characters. Confused yet?

Okay, the front story, or more immediate narrative of Tom Lake, follows 50-something Lara Nelson, a wife and mother living on a Northern Michigan cherry farm (another dramatic subtext) as she tells her three grown daughters, home during the 2020 pandemic, about her long-ago love affair with famous actor Peter Duke (think: a 1980s James Dean; I’m picturing 90210-era Luke Perry).

Note that in this novel there is not a whole lot of Rust Belt significance to hang our hats on here at Rust Belt Girl. This setting is not Rust Belt Michigan, but the Michigan of the Upper Midwest’s Fruit Belt. But, hey, we contain—and read—multitudes, right? And, really, Patchett rarely disappoints.

Told as a dual narrative, Tom Lake’s backstory follows the love affair between then-young actors, Lara and Peter, at a summer stock theatre in Michigan where they perform both Our Town and Sam Shepard’s one-act Fool for Love, which I need to watch next. (A girl can only do so much homework.) Quick distillation, Our Town is a gentle (even genteel in that puritanical New England way) portrayal of young love; Fool for Love explores romantic love’s dark and destructive side.

So, Patchett’s novel Tom Lake is a story about the light and dark of love. But it’s also—and this might be even more interesting and applicable to us writers—a story about storytelling. Who tells the story, when, how, why, and about whom and to whom. What’s included in the storytelling and, maybe even more importantly, what’s left out?

A dual narrative novel is difficult to pull off; I know because I’ve tried this twice. Invariably, a reader will like one narrative more than the other and grow impatient when their favorite narrative is offstage. For me, Tom Lake’s 1980s narrative, its backstory, is more compelling (because much more is happening) than the 2020 narrative, which is mostly telling, with less forward-moving action (think: literal cherry picking). Which left the modern timeline feeling more like a frame or bookends for the real story—a way to go back in time to the main action and a way to come out of it again.

I won’t digress too long on why writers like Ann Patchett feel the need for modern-day frames for historical stories. (Yes, a novel set in the 1980s is considered a historical novel.) My guess is it’s because historical novels today are often relegated to the “genre” genre, as in not the literary fiction shelf. Okay, digression over.

My favorite (oft quoted) line from Our Town, which feels very instrumental to this discussion on storytelling (and okay there’s a little spoiler here): Toward the end of the play, the dead character Emily, who returns to her life for just one day, asks the stage manager if any living person ever realizes “life as they live it,” and he says no, but then adds an exception. “The saints and poets maybe—they do some.”

There’s a lot of smart stuff happening in this novel of Patchett’s when it comes to the all-important telling of life’s story—our human way of re-living what we can’t grasp with our little human minds in the moment. We can’t all be—though maybe we can all aspire to be—saints and poets.

Patchett’s main character, Lara, who is narrating her story of young love, to her grown daughters, is basically the stage manager of her own story, choosing how and what to tell as she goes. At one point Lara equates the stage manager in Our Town with God, which brings up interesting ideas about faith (Patchett was raised Catholic and it often shows in her writing) as well as destiny/Providence in our lives, and agency in how we portray our life stories.

What about the part of our story we leave untold, for our hearts, alone? I thought about this a lot as I read Patchett’s novel. For the main character, Lara, it was a dark part, and (dare I say) foolish aspect of young romantic love she shields from her grown daughters. In not telling her whole story, the light and the dark, is she playing God? Are we all?

In my writerly opinion, the darkness in her story Lara keeps to herself isn’t earned by the character, un unusual flaw in character development on Patchett’s part. (Also very important to know when to wrap up a narrative.) But it is a stumble far outweighed by all the really fine storytelling she does in this novel. If this criticism feels vague, it’s because I don’t want to spoil the reveal. (Read it and tell me what you think!)

If there’s one author I’ve followed closely for some time, it’s Patchett. Her annotated version of Bel Canto—my favorite novel of hers—makes a great gift for the literary fiction (or opera) lover. Of her more recent novels, her 2019 release, The Dutch House, felt like a near perfect novel to me: quiet, to be sure, with none of the Le Carre-like action of Bel Canto, but an incredibly immersive read with characters who felt like my own brother and sister by the end of the book. Family ties Patchett writes about brilliantly, if she’s a little less adept at depicting romantic love and specifically sex.

Saints? I might know a few in the making. Poets? I’m honored to know a good handful. But for the rest of us, Patchett’s got me thinking about how lucky we writers are to get to craft our stories. How lucky we readers are to watch other writers and poets tell their stories just as they wish. We receive such instrumental gifts this way!

Have you read this novel? Have you seen the plays that informed this novel? What elements of craft and storytelling did they bring up for you?

And…what was your favorite bookish gift you gave or received so far this holiday season?

Check out my categories above for more guest posts, interviews, book reviews, literary musings, and writing advice we can all use. Never miss a post when you follow Rust Belt Girl. Thanks! ~Rebecca

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Posted on November 29, 2025November 28, 2025 by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 10 Comments

Lit Fest Roundup 2025: who I met, what I wrote, how much pizza I consumed

This October I attended my eighth annual Fall Literary Festival hosted by Lit Youngstown. It was the Ohio literary organization’s ninth—and final—fall lit fest (at least for now). I could just be weepy about it (I’m weepy about much these days, tbh), but I’m too grateful to stay weepy. Since it’s a weekend to do grateful, let’s get into it…

Don’t worry, Lit Youngstown itself—with all of its amazing programming–is going strong at 10 years old. But before I get into my 2025 lit fest roundup I want to take a moment to share a few highlights from lit fests gone by (forgive my literary nostalgia), in no particular order:

Novelist Rachel Swearingen telling us craft session participants to, “Write towards change.” And “Stop thinking about characters and start thinking about relationships.” (Fiction writing changemaker right there!)

Me, getting to tell my story of my mom’s protesting of a nuclear power plant near my hometown when I was a kid (I wrote about it here) and detailing how that story turned into an integral part of my eco-novel (published someday, world!)

Exploring ekphrastic writing at the Butler Institute of American Art (great museum road-trip idea for you out of towners!) and exploring Youngstown writ large (getting to stay with friends and enjoying the local cuisine (there will never be enough pickle pizza, noggin-sized meatballs, and pierogis!))

Getting to be a student of Sandra Beasley, Ross Gay, Lawrence Coates, and so many other teacher-writers and getting to tell them over charcuterie and a glass of wine: “you wrote my favorite poem, essay, novella, thank you…”

Meeting writer friends (like the talented Melissa Fraterrigo) in person after years of reading her work (her novel Glory Days inspired a lot of what I’ve been trying to highlight at this blog these last nine years or so—stay tuned for a review of her memoir in essays, pictured). And meeting other friends year after year and weaving our stories—and lives—together.

The highest highlight? You. Becoming a member of the Lit Youngstown community through the fall lit fest has been incredibly rewarding for my literary life—and my life-life. Thank you, friends.

Now, 2025’s list fest was one for the books. (Peruse a few pics above and below.) And if you thought the environmental theme was going to mean a slew of nature poems…well, yes, and… Yes, and fascinating eco-fiction and challenging environmental memoir and poetry about nature redefined—from a place that was once an indigo plantation to the night sky over the Grand Canyon to trails cut by troubled teens into the Pacific Northwest woods—and so much more that “shapes our experience and identity, and represents our rootedness in earth.” Whew! I encourage you to read the impressive bios of the five 2025 featured presenters.

My preparation for this lit fest happily began months in advance of the event. (Once a student, always a student.) For my conversation with fiction writer David Huebert and memoirist and poet Sean Prentiss I read several of their books—she gestures to collage artfully displayed on her office floor—representing an array of what we lump under the term “environmental writing.” Look for a follow-up post with a good chunk of our discussion—fascinating and fun!

Other personal highlights from this year’s lit fest. (Know that this is just a fraction of the offerings and I, once again, wished I could have cloned myself, so I could make every single session.):

Day 1:

Narrative Medicine [definition: healthcare practiced with narrative competence]: A Generative Workshop, facilitated by family nurse practitioner and poet Dana Reeher. Imagine me taking furious notes for the anthology project I’m co-editing: Body of Work, essays at the intersection of dance and health. For a little workshop exercise, Dana asked us participants to respond to a writing prompt, “an expansive invitation to open the mind,” so I thought I’d write a very short piece about my own dancing and its impact on my physical and mental health outlook:

Maybe the mistake was I listened too well, that I pointed my feet too hard, that I really could feel that string coming out of the top of my head lifting me up to the studio ceiling. Maybe I postured too much, wanted too much. Maybe I turned out until I was turned in. Maybe all that looking in the mirror made me someone else. I can still spot a dancer, or an anorexic, from fifty paces.

My dancer friends here will likely recognize a lot of this, but especially the posture-reminder telling baby ballet dancers to imagine there’s a string coming out of the top of your head… After sharing my short piece of writing, a couple of the other workshop participants said the string image reminded them of a marionette. I’d never thought of that before, and I’ll tell you that image is still working on me!

The Pamela Papers: A Mostly E-pistolary Story of Academic Pandemic Pandemonium: The Musical. Based on the award-winning novel by Nancy McCabe, published by Outpost 19 in 2024, the presentation included a dramatic reading (with singing—who was expecting a musical at the lit fest? Not I. And it was such fun!).

Readings by David Huebert and Sean Prentiss in St. John’s (gorgeous limestone and stained glass) Episcopal Church sanctuary. Your girl provided introductions to both writers—thanks for putting up with my unorthodox investigative process to make sure they were exciting, guys!

Day 2:

Bengal Tiger Moments: Time Perception in Creative Writing, facilitated by Sean Prentiss. In this fascinating session, we talked about speed on the page, presented in five categories from fastest to slowest: Gaps, Summary, Scene, Dilation, and Pause. Sean presented examples of these techniques from creative nonfiction and explained the brain science behind our understanding of the movement of time—irl and on the page.

Rooting the Self: Writing as an Act of Person, Political & Environmental Transformation & Transcendence, a multi-genre workshop with (beautiful and talented) Rebe Huntman, author of My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic & Miracle: Rebe took us through various stages/ways of honoring our voice and our writing by making space for it and celebrating it, including meditation, morning pages, repetitive activity (including list-making), “the writing cave,” and writing constraints and freewrites. My favorite prompt, a list-making exercise we did in this session, produced these lists, below. (From there I spun out a short prose piece, “Reasons to Revere Your Vagus Nerve” (we’ll see where that weirdness goes!):

5 Things I Consider a Miracle
High arches
Warm pie
The vagus nerve
Sweating carafes of water
Tanned leather

5 Recurring Obsessions
Ballet hands
Song
Accents, dialects, and regionalisms
Mom, mom, mom
Delight

Readings by poets Lauren Camp, Todd Davis & Kourtney Morrow: poems of cityscape to countryside to the night sky over the Grand Canyon left us audience members awed.

Days After

And then, after… there’s nothing better than returning home from a literary event inspired, nurtured, and with a few new ideas for writing already on the page.

If you’re reading this on Small Business Saturday, might I suggest you also read small and lit small by supporting your local indie bookstores and your favorite literary organizations today?!

Did you attend Lit Youngstown’s Fall Literary Festival last month? Another lit fest? What was your favorite part? Have an inspiration gleaned or a piece of writing captured you’d like to share? Feel free to jot it in the comments.

Like this post? Comment below or on my FB page. And please share with your friends and social network.

Are you a Rust Belt writer interested in seeing if your own post, or author interview, or book review might be right for Rust Belt Girl? Hit me up through this site’s contact function.

Check out my categories above for more guest posts, interviews, book reviews, literary musings, and writing advice we can all use. Never miss a post when you follow Rust Belt Girl. Thanks! ~Rebecca

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Posted on November 11, 2025 by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 4 Comments

More from The Rabbit Hutch: Reflecting on a conversation with National Book Award winner Tess Gunty

Tess Gunty’s 2022 debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, won that year’s National Book Award for Fiction (and other awards) and also won hearts—especially among Rust Belt readers.

Pittsburgh-based author and art writer Emma Riva wrote a wonderful essay about The Rabbit Hutch published here at Rust Belt Girl I encourage you to read next—if you haven’t already.

I was late to the novel, myself, and was struck by how Catholic it felt, despite not being marketed that way (for obvious reasons).

I was thrilled to “meet” Gunty yesterday evening through the Jesuit Media Lab‘s conversation over Zoom with the author. A sizable group of us avid readers tuned in to listen to Gunty talk about being raised Catholic and writing about The Rabbit Hutch main character’s deep interest in female mystics and mysticism, about researching Hildegard von Bingen and discovering her “extraordinary theatre of mental activity” and agency, about technology and art and how Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a “perfect allegory for AI,” and much more!

“I wanted to make art out of my characters’ lives, including their digital lives,” the author said about her novel that still feels very much of this technological moment. (Gunty herself doesn’t partake in social media and, clearly, it benefits her writing. “You need to keep the tool of your mind as sharp and clean as possible,” she said.)

As for the novel’s fictional setting of Vacca Vale, Indiana, Gunty said that the place was the only thing she knew for certain she wanted to portray, going in, that the setting started out being the MC—until she was about three-quarters of the way through writing the first draft.

She said she wanted to capture the “purgatorial” nature of post-industrial cities like Youngstown, Ohio, Flint, Michigan, and Gary, Indiana. (No shade intended, I don’t think!) How to capture the sensation of such places, like her hometown of South Bend, on which the novel’s setting is based? In the books she read, Gunty said, “I never encountered any place like my hometown.” And yet politicians and movies portray a flat stereotype of such post-industrial Midwestern places.

Gunty’s description sparked pride in me, last night. She described our Midwestern and Rust Belt cities as places of mystery, magnitude, and complexity. When you don’t see a place like your home reflected in literature, “you feel like it doesn’t matter,” she said. For Gunty, writing this novel, then, was an attempt to insist upon the “dynamism and multi-dimensionality” of her hometown—and others like it.

Like mine. Maybe like yours, too.

I encourage you to check out JML for their book talks and other events.

Have you read The Rabbit Hutch? What did you think? Did you read Emma Riva’s essay about it?

Like this post? Comment below or on my FB page. And please share with your friends and social network.

Are you a Rust Belt writer interested in seeing if your own post, or author interview, or book review might be right for Rust Belt Girl? Hit me up through this site’s contact function.

Check out my categories above for more guest posts, interviews, book reviews, literary musings, and writing advice we can all use. Never miss a post when you follow Rust Belt Girl. Thanks! ~Rebecca

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Posted on July 17, 2025July 17, 2025 by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 7 Comments

“This Woman”: an Essay by Melissa Ballard

Essayist Melissa Ballard contributes the fourth in our series of guest posts here at Rust Belt Girl, and, let me tell you, you’re in for a treat. Melissa has a talent for bringing the past to life and making her ancestors feel like our shared family. In this essay we meet Phyllis, Melissa’s grandmother, a woman of Northern Appalachian Ohio, whom Melissa writes about in a loving yet candid way, deftly delving into what makes personhood–class, sex, education, place and much more. (We also hope Phyllis is having the “time of her life,” Melissa.)

This Woman

by Melissa Ballard

This woman is my grandma, but not yet.

In this black and white photograph, a small, dark hat of woven straw covers her hair and shades her forehead. She wears a walking suit: a jacket and skirt in a light wool pin check with a belt of the same fabric, over a silky, patterned, blouse. The tips of the fingers of her left-hand rest in the pocket of her slim skirt. Her only jewelry is a ring on the little finger of that hand. I can imagine her cropped left foot pointing out, her dark stockings and t-straps. She slouches just a bit and turns her body toward the unidentified photographer. She looks directly at the camera. Her smile is slight, but it reaches her eyes.

This woman’s slight curves contrast with the riveted metal beam, perhaps part of a railroad bridge, that rises at a sharp diagonal behind her. In the early 1920s, her family lived on a side street a few blocks from the train station in Dennison, Ohio. Her father was an inspector for the railroad, so she had a free pass to ride.

This woman could be waiting for the early train to Pittsburgh or Columbus, where she will walk the streets with confidence, on her way to a job interview. But she is not. Or at least I don’t think so. I know little about this brief period, but I hope she is having the time of her life.

In 1925 she has a job in an ice cream shop, lives with her parents. Both she and her mother, who is preoccupied with social status, are named “Margaret.” This woman has already started to express her individuality and goes by her middle name, Phyllis or, on documents, “M. Phyllis.”

On June 18, 1925, eleven days before her nineteenth birthday, Phyllis and her neighbor, Harry, will travel 65.3 miles, maybe by train, to Brooke County, a tapering finger of West Virginia tucked between Ohio and Pennsylvania, where they can get a marriage license with no waiting period. Later that day, they will return to Ohio and be married at the home of the groom’s family.

I wonder whether Phyllis’ parents even attended. They had a reception for her later, but I gather it was her mother’s attempt at saving face. I can’t imagine she approved of my grandpa or his family, and I can easily hear her saying, “He’ll never make a decent living. You’ll end up in the poor house.”

Five months and five days later, their first child will be born. On January 14, 1928, their second child, my dad, will be born.

The woman I remember, my grandma, was in her fifties. She had slim legs but a solid middle. She wore silver, cat-eye glasses before they were retro. Her short, dark hair was streaked with gray and white, her fingernails chewed to the quick. Wearing a well-washed cotton housedress covered with a flowered or checked apron and heavy lace-up shoes, she kept chickens and goats, grew vegetables and flowers, ran the laundry through a wringer before hanging it outside to dry, cooked meals from scratch. She kept a battered pan under the kitchen sink, filling it with food scraps. Every morning she fed it to the three hound dogs Grandpa had brought home from the dog pound, kept in a pen at the back of the yard. “Oh, hush up,” she said as they yipped and howled at her.

When Grandma wasn’t busy with chores, she answered the phone for Grandpa, who was the dog warden. She wrote messages in her flowery cursive: the name, address and phone number of the caller, and a brief description of the stray dog. She followed him to his dark green truck, reading her notes out loud. Grandpa never wrote anything down. Before she finished talking, he was backing out of the long driveway, kicking up gravel as he went.

They lived in a worn-out house on a liminal strip of land in Brightwood, part of Goshen Township, Tuscarawas County; my parents and I had moved to a suburb of Cleveland. Once a month, we made the two-hour trip down home to visit, and I spent more time there during the summer.

On hot afternoons, Grandma and I often sat together on the front porch swing, she doing her mending and me reading, trying to catch a breeze. A two-lane road ran close to the front of the house. The cars seemed to fly by, and the exhaust from the trucks taught me to mouth breathe, a skill I perfected when I ran into the hen house to collect eggs.

This route was nicknamed the “slow road” after a highway, the “fast road,” was built behind the house. One summer Saturday, Grandpa drove us into town on the slow road to get ice cream. Grandma and I sat on a bench with our cones, people-watching while Grandpa ran one of his mysterious errands. If Grandma asked him where he was going, he always said, “I need to see a man about a horse.” Which was odd, because my grandparents didn’t have any horses.

On the way home, I noticed a large house on a hill. “Who lives there?” I asked.

Grandma stiffened. “That’s the poor house. Where you go to live if you don’t have any money. It’s not a nice place.”

I immediately pictured a nineteenth-century orphanage from one of the many books I read. Rows of rusty metal cots with stained mattresses, thin sheets, and scratchy blankets. Peeling paint on crumbling walls. I shuddered and looked away.

…

The dining room at Grandma’s was small, with windows on three sides, some covered in plastic to keep out drafts. It was an afterthought tacked on to one side of the house next to the living room. It contained a water-spotted stand of neglected African violets, a treadle sewing machine with a clove-studded dried orange tucked in one of its small oak drawers, a large dining room table and chairs, and a handmade oak China cabinet Grandma had purchased for ten dollars with the money she made selling eggs.

When Grandma made Sunday dinner for our extended family it was served at noon. Grandma removed elegant pieces of stemmed glassware and individual salt cellars from the cabinet and set the dining room table with her good silverware. As we passed roasted chicken with gravy, noodles, and side dishes, Grandpa arrived late (he was known for having “girlfriends”), threw his work cap in the corner, and took his seat at the head of the table.

Only now do I realize how little Grandma wasted. Usually, she cooked one of her own chickens on Sunday, but she occasionally made a pork roast. After the meal, any scraps of meat were set aside, combined with corn meal mush (I can only imagine her reaction to polenta recipes in upscale restaurants) and baked in a loaf pan. For breakfast the next day, she fried slices and we covered them with butter and syrup. They were delicious.

Over time, and with deaths and disagreements, our extended family grew smaller, and we began eating all our meals in the large kitchen. The food was still delicious. One time, Grandma asked how everything tasted. Grandpa was the only one who didn’t answer. She stared at him, and he finally grumbled, “If anything’s not good, I’ll let you know.” Already showing signs of Parkinson’s, he poured a bit of his coffee into a saucer with shaky hands, and leaned down to slurp it.

Eventually, an old couch was jammed into a corner of the dining room, next to the china cabinet. It became my reading space when I visited. Now, as I sit down to read on my own sofa, I look at that same cabinet on the front wall of my living room in Oberlin, just two hours away from where Grandma lived. I have covered the top with family photographs.

Grandma taught me how to tie my shoes–we were both left-handed–after everyone else had given up; gave me my first sip of coffee, strong but cut with generous portions of sugar and thick cream; slipped me some of her beer while we watched Gunsmoke. As I got older and visited less, we wrote letters.

Shortly after my twenty-first birthday, Grandma and I walk in her back yard. We stop under the hot sun to admire the clumps of purple, yellow, and white miniature pansies that flourish in the crumbling foundation of an old shed. I started college three years late; I tell her I am overwhelmed and don’t think I can do the work. She is quiet, removes a flowered hanky from her apron pocket, pats her damp forehead and the back of her neck.

As we start slowly up the steps to the relative cool of the house, I link arms with her. I brush the cool copper of the bracelet she always wears because she believes it helps her arthritis. Her fingers are crooked, as mine are now. As I write this, I touch the copper cuff bracelet I bought years ago but have never worn. I keep it on my desk as a reminder of Grandma, and I wonder what happened to the soft, linked one she always wore.

I open the back door with my other hand. Grandma suddenly stands as straight as she is able and says firmly, “You stay in school.” She adds this, which I will hear her say more than once: “You need to be able to make your own money.”

…

After I’ve finished graduate school, married, and had a child. After Grandpa, who spent years in a nursing home with Parkinson’s, has died. On what will turn out to be the day my dad, her son, dies, Grandma moves into an assisted living facility. With Dad being ill, no one has had the time to take Grandma to see the place prior to moving in. She’s been calling me several times a day, anxious about the change.

She surveys the room: her favorite chair with an afghan she made folded over the back; her dresser, its top covered with a lacy scarf and family photographs, including several of my daughter; a large window that looks out on gardens; the new spread my mom placed on her bed that morning; a private bath.

She leans close to me and whispers, “Oh, Melissa, this is beautiful. I was afraid it would be like the poor house.”

Melissa Ballard has written essays for The Brevity Blog, Belt, Berea College magazine, and other publications. She is currently working on a book-length collection of essays about the women in her Northern Appalachia family.

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Posted on April 16, 2025April 16, 2025 by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 13 Comments

Stay- and Play-WP: Creativity is the writer’s cure for FOMO

Last month’s AWP (the Association of Writers & Writing Programs) Conference & Bookfair—think writer-prom—wasn’t in the cards for me this year. My rational brain knew this, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t suffer from some FOMO. Writer friends, the warm L.A. sun, and the lure of the unknown—will I meet the literary agent of my dreams in the hotel bar?!—are attractive elements, for sure. But I decided to save my pennies and hold out for next year’s event in nearby Baltimore. (Who’s in?)

Really, that March weekend, I hardly had time to wallow in my FOMO (the name of my upcoming memoir, stay tuned, ha). But seriously, the indomitable Justin Hamm, poet and super solid literary citizen, created StayWP, an online poet and writers conference, to slake our literary thirst, as it were. What’s better than poetry in your pajamas!? Here’s a sampling of what us nearly 100 participants from around the country enjoyed from Friday evening through Sunday evening:

Readings from novelists including Mark Ostrowski and poets including Sean Thomas Dougherty
Generative workshops with titles like “Where the Poetry Rises like Dough Workshop” and “Rooted in Place,” led by former Missouri Poet Laureate Karen Craigo, which I attended, and “Like it’s my job. (‘Cause it is): Writing, Motherhood, and the (Re)Formation of Work”
Enthralling discussions, including “In Dialogue,” “Casting Spells for the Future,” and “Power of the Poet Posse” (that’s a gang I could get behind!)

Saturday, my super talented friend Shemaiah Gonzalez (whose debut collection of essays launches next week!) hosted a generative workshop over Zoom. The hook: How do you even begin to get ideas on what to write: let alone something joyful? Looking at three pieces of writing, we participants came up with our own. I got a couple really good starts for essays and even a prayer (for our sweet neighbor who snowplows our drive in the winter, even before he does his cousin’s drive next door).

One of the prompts was so intriguing I’ll share it, paraphrased, with Shemaiah’s permission. We were asked to draw a sketch of a place we knew well: a home, or place of work or worship. Then, we were to pick a specific spot to interrogate. I think about writing about place a lot here on the blog, but Shemaiah made that importance plain: “We write about place because place is where we keep our stuff.” And, of course, the stuff we choose to keep is important to us. I ended up writing about the rattan rocking chair—the best seat—my dad would often occupy when our family would go out on to the porch to watch rain showers. (My kids think it’s hysterical we did this. But then I also truly enjoyed The Waltons. It was a different time.)

My weekend of creativity continued on Sunday, when I took one of my sons with me to hear Akron, Ohio, native poet Rita Dove (who received the National Humanities Medal from President Bill Clinton the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama—the only poet ever to receive both medals) at the Baltimore Museum of Art. (Thank you to co-sponsor Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth!) The little I knew of Dove, I learned from talking with Akron’s own David Giffels in an interview right here at Rust Belt Girl. This poetry reading was my son’s first, and so now he is ruined for all other poetry readings, I’m afraid. But what a way to go down!

As I’m wont to do, I took a notebook and jotted images I liked from the poems she read. Here are several lines from Dove’s beautiful work, which I smushed together like a found poem, a found Dove poem:

scabbed like a colt, our stuttering pride
my Cleveland cousins, hachety smiles
we were a musical lantern
tired of singing for someone else
what you bear is a lifetime of song
if you can't be free, be a mystery

Baltimore Museum of Art
Piece of art from artist Raúl de Nieves
Yes, I got it signed and it’s special. What should I read next?
Rita Dove and me (taken and posted with the poet’s permission)
Baltimore street scene–gotta love some row houses

There are few things that improve with age. Wine is one. Hutzpah is another, and don’t you know my hand was the first that shot up during the Q&A with Dove? Since I knew I’d be writing about this reading for Rust Belt Girl, I asked her what it meant to her poetry to be from the Rust Belt. Her answer was really interesting. She talked about understanding and appreciating work and its value from her family members and neighbors. She talked about the value of diversity, including a strong Hungarian presence among the immigrant groups in her part of town. A singular place, she also noted the term that makes Akron its own unique think: the “devil’s strip” for the tree lawn or berm between the sidewalk and the street. What do you call that strip, where you’re from?

Dove also talked about her journey from aspiring musician to poet. (She still plays the cello.) She noted that she was very shy and didn’t want to get up in front of people and so turned to words. Ha. There we were, all 200 or so of us. She later learned to play the viola de gamba and took voice lessons, and learned to sing opera, which helped her to “embody the words” in her poetry. She has worked with musicians on song cycles, collaborations that helped her feel “less afraid of being bold.”

I’ll end there. I know I wish for that. Here’s to words in poems and in song—and to being bold.

Now it’s your turn: tell me, if you’re a writer, have you been to AWP? Do you plan on attending next year? How do you quash FOMO in your creative life or otherwise? And how do you tap into your boldest self?

Hankering for Rust Belt author interviews, book reviews, and more? Check out my categories above. I hope you’ll follow me here, if you don’t already, so you never miss a (quite infrequent) post. Thanks! ~Rebecca

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Posted on March 12, 2025 by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 7 Comments

Ohio is Ohio, and I love it

You are forgiven if you’re not up on the middle school slang that has redefined the word “Ohio” (my beautiful native state) as cringey or weird.

Does that mean the writing from Ohio authors or about Ohio places is also weird? In some cases (and often my favorite cases) yes.

It has been more than a minute, Rust Belt Girl followers, and I appreciate you for hanging on. Busy days around here with a book project going and essays popping up here and there. And of course there’s work-work to contend with. And my teenagers who keep me hip (surely that’s not a word they’d use) through their generation’s reinvention of language, music, and fashion. (A whole wardrobe of hooded sweatshirts and oversized black jeans, anyone?)

But I’m thrilled to share with you my latest essay, which is part essay and part book review. The book? Matthew Meduri’s debut novel Collegiate Gothic. Part satirical campus novel, part crime procedural, and part Italian architectural treatise, this one is quite fun (and, yes, a little Ohio.)

I’d love it if you checked out my essay–“Campus Weird: Collegiate Gothic Skewers Academia (and Ohio) in Fine Form” at Belt Magazine. (Bonus points for identifying the Ohio college campus building in the photo. I only know because a friend told me.)

Then, go check out Matthew’s novel over at Bordighera Press.

What have you been reading and writing lately, readerly and writerly friends?

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Posted on September 10, 2024September 9, 2024 by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 11 Comments

New poem published by Trampoline Poetry

I’ve been operating far outside my comfort zone and way outside my fiction-writer lane lately.

Querying a novel will do that to a writer. Fiction-writing feels a little fraught when you’re trying to woo agents and presses with your fiction. So, I turned my attention to writing essays–and even a little poetry. Here’s:

“Satie Sestina: YouTube Comments on Gymnopedies”

Thanks to Trampoline Poetry‘s editor Justin Lacour. And many thanks to my writing critique group–present and past members alike–who, first, told me this long poem I was working on would work best as a sestina (a what?); and, second, gave me the permission to play with the form (just) a little.

If you’re interested, you can read my bio out at Trampoline Poetry, where I explain how the idea for this poem came to be. (Thank you, YouTube comments!)

Now, who else is a Satie fan?

More Rust Belt literary goodness soon. ~Rebecca

Posted on August 12, 2024August 11, 2024 by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 17 Comments

Take that New York Times: My not-list of the best books of vague parameters according to me

If there’s anything readers like more than a Top Reads list, it’s complaining about a Top Reads list. Earlier this summer, the New York Times published “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.” Remember that? Of course you do. Reddit basically blew up that day.

We all had definite feelings about said list. Namely, that it didn’t include genre fiction and books of poetry, the latter an egregious omission imo. It did include several of my favorites: Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage (gutting), Helen MacDonald’s H is For Hawk (gorgeous), Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Interpreter of Maladies (instructive in the very best way), Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (what’s a synonym for gutting?), Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto (magnificent), Elizabeth’s Strout’s Olive Kitteridge (sleepy in the best way), Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (transcendent), and Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (masterful and also long).

Only a couple have I discussed here at Rust Belt Girl: Robinson’s Gilead (cue the car-sobbing) and the novel that came in at No. 1 on the NYT list: Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend. None of the books on the list that I’ve read could be described as Rust Belt books, so I protest! But not really.

The wonderful thing about Top Reads lists is that we avid readers read them, get mad, and then the maddening lists beget more lists. Which is great. After we got mad at the NYT, they featured another story, “Readers Respond to the ‘Best Books of the 21st Century,’” chock full of the books that should have been on the first list. I saw Best Books lists featuring Appalachian Reads and reading roundups galore. All this leads me to believe that there are never enough lists, the lists are never long enough, and yet they are also ALWAYS incomplete. There’s room for my book and there’s room for your book on those lists. So get to it, writers!

Really, my blog is my ever-changing (let’s say “curated,” cuz that sounds fancy) list. I’d love to know what your favorite book from my list is. (How about from your list?) And then Goodreads is my dump—everything goes there, unless I really hated it, in which case I probably DNF’ed anyway. Are we connected out there at the dump?

Recent (ly read) books that stunned this Rust Belt Girl but aren’t necessarily Rust Belt books are basically the books I keep thinking about and talking about: A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast by Dorthe Nors (let’s all read more essays in translation!); Sonata: A Memoir by Andrea Avery (lyrical, musical, and propulsive); The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylvainen (interestingly atmospheric); The Beginning Was the End: Devo in Ohio by Jade Dillinger and Akron’s own David Giffels (so that’s what New Wave was all about!?); and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (gutting x 12—what exactly is wrong with me?).

You see, once you get started list-making, it never stops.

Looking for a review or an author review–or even a little writerly advice (I try to take myself)? See my categories above. And find me on Goodreads, where I try to at least rank what I’ve read. Let’s be friends there and on FB and at all the places!