Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 17 Comments

Welcome to the 2023 Rust Belt Girl round-up…

I interrupt this Covid haze–mine, yes, I was gifted the virus for Christmas–to present a round-up of all the Rust Belt Girl goodness in 2023, made possible by you amazing readers and followers. (For you math and science types, here are your facts and stats):

2023 total views: 5,069, from 3,575 viewers, for 231 likes, and 170 comments. Thank you for engaging!

Most Viewed Post (MVP) 2023: A stellar review of Jason Irwin’s poetry collection, The History of Our Vagrancies, by Marjorie Maddox (Side note: I met Jason in person for the first time and reconnected with Marjorie in October at the Fall Literary Festival in Youngstown.)

2nd Place for MVP 2023 (and tops for most–and most heartwarming–comments): “Mad Dog, “Steel Poet,” Tim Russell, a literary reflection by poet and publisher Larry Smith. Thank you to Larry for being such a pillar of this literary community. (I also met Tim’s widow, Jodi, for the first time, in October–there were hugs!)

3rd Place for MVP 2023: The Rabbit Hutch‘s Rust Belt Renaissance, a review by Emma Riva, an author and art writer living in Pittsburgh, who is also the founder and EIC of Petrichor, Pittsburgh’s art scene magazine. Check it out!

Most Viewed Author Interview: My interview with John W. Kropf, author of Color Capital of the World. (Though John and I both live in the Greater Washington D.C. area, as luck would have it, we were in Ohio at the same time earlier this year, and I was able to meet him and his lovely wife Eileen at a reading and book-signing not far from where Color Capital takes place.)

And don’t miss all the other 2023 bloggo goodness, including interviews with Mitch James, author of the rural noir novel Seldom Seen; Valerie Neiman, author of YA novel The Lonely Backwater; and David Giffels, author of The Beginning Was the End: Devo in Ohio. (This makes three interviews with David at Rust Belt Girl, some kind of interviewing trifecta!)

Then there was John W. Miller’s beautiful guest essay: From Belgium to the Rust Belt. (In a fun coincidence, John and I ended up in the same storytelling course this fall–the writing world is a small one.)

And in other fun blog news, my 2022 review, Enlarging “Rust Belt lit” and Megan Giddings’ The Women Could Fly, was picked up by Belt Magazine in 2023.

2023 felt pretty good and creative outside of the blog, too: I published a short story and a poem(!) and started querying a novel (a couple of you blog followers and friends beta-read!). I am infinitely lucky and grateful to cross paths with as many of you as I do–even if only on these interwebs.

I think we deserve a happy and healthy 2024 with all the writerly and readerly connections we desire. Those of you local to these D.C./Baltimore parts, find me on January 14 at EC Poetry & Prose’s Salon Series. Thank you again to Patti, my fellow blogger–and extraordinary poet and spoken word artist “little pi”–for inviting me to read!

As for Rust Belt Girl, keep in mind that I love a guest post–author interview, book review, or essay on the writing life and beyond–so hit me up.

Want more Rust Belt writing, book reviews, author interviews, writing advice, essays, guest posts, and more in your life? Follow me here. Thanks! 

Oh, and if you want to check out my reading superlatives for 2023, they’re at Goodreads. Or, find me on FB. Share your top posts or top reads for 2023 in the comments. I’d love to hear about your writerly, readerly year.

(Off to nap…again.)

*free header image courtesy of Pexels

Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 32 Comments

Not a post about a Christmas cookie

This is a post about a community Christmas cookie.

***

Bear with me, and hello! Happiest of holiday seasons to you and yours!

And back to the aforementioned cookie…

It was Christmas Eve Eve, and I’d waited too long to secure anise seed, a necessary ingredient in my favorite Christmas cookie, one I make religiously, each and every year: German Springerle.

I visited four stores on my search for the elusive, black licorice-scented seed and found none. I lamented supply chain issues and the state of commerce in particular and the world in general. But not for long, because Christmas.

In a last ditch attempt to keep my cookie tradition alive, my husband suggested I ask for anise seed on our village’s FB page. Within the hour, I had offers of fennel seed and star anise–the latter of which I believed just might work.

Because this is not a baking blog (you’re welcome), I won’t bore you with the recipe–unless you want it (I don’t believe in secret recipes). But suffice it to say the cookie turned out great with the substitution. Yes, it takes a village.

You probably have your own community cookie story. Maybe it’s an actual cookie. Maybe it’s something a little more poignant.

As Epiphany approaches, the Wise Men in our nativity set inch closer to the scene. These smart guys (rightly) get a lot of press. They brought pretty important ingredients to that out-of-the-way stable.

Our nativity set also features some more colorful comers–a rough-looking fellow bringing a chicken and eggs; a woman bringing several loaves of bread balanced on her head; a drummer and a bagpiper bringing the tunes.

Me, I’ve been bringing the music, this year, my first full year as a cantor at my Catholic parish and for weddings and funerals. And this singing way of things has found its way into my home-life (working on a Von Trapp vibe over here!) and my writing-life. In my novel-in-progress I ask: Can our songs save us? And in my recent nonfiction, I try to bring my voice closer to my heart.

If you know me out on Twitter–land of snark–you’ll know that in addition to cookies, I am the one who brings the shrimp ring to a party. (My Midwestern child-self would be duly impressed.) Snark aside, I try to do my small part at a time when it seems we’re all pulled apart, party-less.

Because, we can’t make all the good stuff entirely on our own. It takes community.

Community is why I started this blog way back in 2017. And it’s why I will continue to hype the poets and writers and literary-scene-makers of the Rust Belt in 2022.

If you haven’t yet checked out some of my favorite posts of this year, I hope you will. Among them: my interview with former steelworker and memoirist Eliese Colette Goldbach, author of Rust; and my interview with poet and memoirist Robert Miltner, author of Ohio Apertures: A Lyric Memoir. Many, many thanks go to those on the answering end of my queries.

2021 Rust Belt Girl blog superlatives? I’ve got those! 3,232 visitors hailing from 78 countries–not bad for a blog that reveres the regional.

My most viewed post (once again) is my gush-fest about Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow. (Have you read his new novel? On my TBR.)

My review of Michigander Dawn Newton’s The Remnants of Summer came up second.

My most-viewed interview this year was that with Cleveland native poet Teri Ellen Cross Davis, whom I got to meet in person–and even break bread with–at Lit Youngstown’s Fall Literary Festival in October. A festival I helped to plan, along with so many other members of that literary community.

The literary world just recently lost Joan Didion. The places she wrote about and from are not my places. But she has a lot to teach us about writing about place. I’m taking this quote of hers into 2022 as inspiration:

A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.

Joan Didion, The White Album, 1979

Whatever place you’re shaping, whatever community you belong to, thank you for being here.

All the best in 2022, stay well, and keep in touch!

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. ~Rebecca

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Posted on by Rebecca Moon Ruark · 20 Comments

Weird Year Revisited: A 2020 Rust Belt Girl Roundup

[Read in your most guilt-laden “Mom” voice] “Oh, 2020. It’s not that we’re mad; we’re just disappointed and maybe a little sad.”

Scratch that, of course we’re mad, too. But rather than stew, let’s do the old superlative list to close out this dumpster fire year. It was a weird one here at the blog, but I’d say that’s par for the course.

2020 Most Viewed Post (heretofore known as MVP): Violence and Ascendance in Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, likely owing to the fact that the popular Italian novelist had a very good year, releasing The Lying Life of Adults in the fall.

2020 Most Liked (you know, the popular girl): On *Not* Writing (with thanks to Stephen King) garnered 112 likes, so it seems I wasn’t the only one who was finding it hard to put pen to paper, this summer.

2020 Surprise Finisher (the scrappy underdog): for being a bummer of a post, The Dead Mom Club…and other lessons in grief got quite a bit of traction (172 views and 63 likes)–though I wish it hadn’t. Next year, let’s plan for “lessons in joy,” shall we?

Special shout-out to the WordPress Editors, who brought back WordPress Discover Prompts for the month of April. The one-word prompts helped me chronicle my family’s isolation at the beginning of the pandemic and also helped me connect with other bloggers–now friends. My most-viewed: my response to Day 2’s prompt, open: Open…water, heart, art

Top author interview was my 2020 two-parter with Sonja Livingston, Rochester NY native and award-winning memoirist. In addition to being a fantastic interview subject, Livingston’s latest book, The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions Into Devotion, was top on my list of favorite nonfiction reads, this year.

Top book review was my 2020 review of Pittsburgh-area native Margo Orlando Littell’s second novel, A Distance from Four Points. Telling a beautiful mother-daughter story, the setting of post-coal country, Pennsylvania, adds a gritty realness that makes this book a standout. Also, among the prettiest book covers of 2020, for sure!

Reading superlatives: I read more in translation in 2020 than any other blog year (there have been 4), concentrating on Moomin-famous Tove Jansson, whose literature for adults informs my current WIP, set partly in Finland. Favorite novel this year: Shiner by Amy Jo Burns. Favorite backlist novels: a three-way tie (I know, I’m pretty terrible at superlatives) between (the very different) The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent; The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling; and The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott, which I read with a book club. Favorite memoir: Rust: a memoir of steel and grit by ElieseColette Goldbach. As for poetry, I haven’t been reading many collections, but I have been getting good daily doses over at Parhelion. Poet Clay Matthews, especially, drew me in.

In other creative writing and editing news: I backburner-ed one novel in favor of concentrating on the new one (55K into draft 1–so I’m beginning to see the light). I’ll have exciting news from short story land early in the new year (woot!). And I’ve been trying my hand at a little essay writing, which has been a nice change. (I keep my About page up to date with my published pieces, if you’re interested.)

I was promoted to associate editor at Parhelion Literary Magazine, where I’m also the features editor. I was proud to help introduce 15 features to the world, including one by fellow blogger, Lani V. Cox, and a few I wrote myself. Not to mention three issues of the magazine, including the latest holiday issue, which has some fantastic fiction, flash, CNF, and poetry for your holiday enjoyment.

One of my fellow bloggers, over at You Can Always Start Now, is doing a #2021wordchallenge, and without really thinking about it, I lit on my word: still. Of course, there’s one of my favorite Christmas carols, “Still, still, still,” which might have been running through my head at the time. But more than that, “still” is a word of resilience. I’m still here, still writing and connecting. Which makes “still” a kind of promise. And then there’s the act of being still–of inviting silence and space for inspiration and creativity, whatever that looks like that day. I want more of that.

I wish for more of that–stillness in all its forms–for both of us, in 2021.

Meet me there.

~Rebecca

Interested in more Rust Belt author interviews, book reviews, essays, and more? Start here. Are we social? Find me at FB and on Twitter and IG @MoonRuark

*Header photo by Tairon Fernandez on Pexels.com