“Happy Anyway: A Flint Anthology” Coming Out June 1

Happy Anyway: A Flint Anthology is Flint at its funniest, its weirdest, and its saddest. A collection of essays and personal narratives, the book, edited by Flint writer and Belt contributor Scott Atkinson, captures an almost impossible-to-capture city. Flint is far more than the common narrative of an industrial town picking itself up after the big company that fed it left, or the victim of a horrendous public health crisis.

Happy Anyway delves into the lives and stories within the city—what it’s like growing up on the eastside or witnessing your first murder; why a certain strange hot dog could bring an entire city so much pride; what it means to finally leave a city that you love—and what it means to stay, even when bikes or jewelry or love keep disappearing.

Including work from Gordon Young, Jan Worth-Nelson, Connor Coyne, Layla Meillier, Andrew Morton, and yours truly. You can pre-order the book here.

The Flint Anthology

My story on Moose and Suzie Fitch, and their struggle to give away their house in Flint, will appear in The Flint Anthology, coming out this year from Belt Publishing. Here’s the announcement: http://beltmag.com/flint-call-for-submissions/.

About Moose and Suzie

Moose and Suzie now live in New Mexico, where Suzie works at Hobby Lobby, and Moose is trying to find a job in something other than construction. Moose is glad to be out of Michigan, especially now that it’s been confirmed that Flint’s drinking water has been poisoned with lead, but he worries about the young family who took the house.