For a few months now, we’ve been impressed with the new anthology Rust Belt Chic — you can read Jason Diamond’s thoughts on the book here. With 2013 about to arrive, it seems appropriate to ring in the new year with an event celebrating the book’s release.

We’ll be hosting a reading on January 3rd at Public Assembly, featuring Pete Beatty, Mike DeCapite, Clare Malone, Noreen Malone, Philip Turner, Anne Trubek, Ami Greko, and R. Stephen Shodin.

7:00 p.m., Public Assembly (70 N. 6th Street, Brooklyn, NY). Facebook RSVP here.

Pete Beatty is from Berea. He edits books for a living in Manhattan, but all his furniture and clothes are in Brooklyn (not the one in Cleveland). He writes and edits for theclassical.org. He is additionally @nocoastoffense.

Upon leaving Cleveland in 1985, Mike DeCapite got to work writing a love letter to the city—his first novel, Through the Windshield (1998), which Harvey Pekar called “one of the better American novels of the past several years” and Jocko Weyland called a “down-at-the-heels masterpiece.” DeCapite’s story “Sitting Pretty,” published first as a CUZ Edition (1999) and then included in The Italian American Reader (2003), is also set in Cleveland, as is much of his unpublished novel Ruined for Life! His work includes the chapbook Creamsicle Blue (2012) and the essay collection Radiant Fog, which is just out from Sparkle Street Books. DeCapite lives in New York.

Clare Malone lives in Washington, D.C and writes for The American Prospect magazine. Her work has also appeared in Slate, Bloomberg, and GOOD.  She grew up in Shaker Heights.

Noreen Malone grew up in Shaker Heights (along with five siblings, including sister Clare). She now lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she writes for the New Republic. Her writing has also appeared in New York, Slate, and Newsweek.

Philip Turner is a longtime Cleveland-area bookseller who with his family owned and ran Undercover Books, with bookstores in Shaker Hts., downtown Cleveland, and Chagrin Falls. He moved to New York City in 1985 where he began working as a book editor and publisher. His personal essays have been published in the BN Review and PW Comics World. He blogs daily at The Great Gray Bridge where he writes about music, books, publishing, media, culture, and current affairs.

Anne Trubek is the author of A Skeptic’s Guide To Writers’ Houses and has written for The Atlantic Monthly, Wired, The New York Times and other publications. A professor at Oberlin College, she did time in Lorain County before moving to Shaker Heights in 2006.

Ami Greko is the founder of Book Camp NYC and the co-creator of the lecture series 7x20x21. You are not allowed to tell her mom or her boss anything about this story.

R. Stephen Shodin was born in Youngstown, Ohio. By day he is a production manager for the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. At night he plays guitar in the instrumental rock band Bells≥. Once in a while he contributes to Vol.1 Brooklyn. He lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

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