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This updates a March 27 article to add new details and the cover.
The editor of "The Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook," being published in the next month or two, changed jobs as he was wrapping up the project -- and his new position fits smoothly with the book. Aaron Foley's joined the mayor's staff in late March to develop a website for neighborhood news and profiles.
His upcoming book will be the 15th paperback from Belt Publishing, a five-year-old Cleveland chronicler of "the industrial Midwest," as the company puts it. Thirty-one creators who know Detroit well contribute neighborhood portraits, reminiscences, laments and reality checks.
The cover is by Detroit artist Haley Suzanne Stone.
The citywide guide, which can be pre-ordered for $20 and $4 shipping, has chapters on West Village, Southwest, Sherwood Forest, Green Acres, the Cass Corridor (two), Palmer Park, Warrendale, Delray, Rivertown, the University District and Minock Park.
Highland Park also gets attention, as do the northwest side's Elmira Street, Jos Campau Avenue, a legendary downtown dive bar and a notoriously gritty northeast Zip code (48205). There's also a chapter on Tiger Stadium and its Corktown setting.
Its nostalgic-style cover is designed by Haley Suzanne Stone of Detroit.
Some writers are established veterans, while others are emerging talents -- all corralled by Foley, who contributes an introduction and a Hamtramck chapter.
The neighborhood-level essays echo the format of Belt's 184-page "Cleveland Neighborhood Guidebook," published last July.
Prominent names on the contents page include Marsha Music, a writer, speaker and historian; Detroit News reporters Ian Thibodeau and Justin Rogers; Jalopnik managing editor Erin Marquis and journalist-author Drew Philp, whose first book ("A $500 House in Detroit") comes out in April.
Other chapters are by these Detroit observers:
Past titles from Belt Publishing, founded in 2012.
- Barbara Barefield, pottery artist and concert producer whose chapter is about her Palmer Park community -- "a glorious crossroad."
- Sara Jane Boyers, a fine art photographer and writer now based in Santa Monica, Calif.
- Lakisha Dumas of the Detroit Zoological Society
- R. J. Fox, a screenwriter, filmmaker and poet whose chapter is on Steve's Place, a legendary dive bar on Congress Street downtown that shut after the June 2015 death of owner Steve Francis at age 90.
- John Freeman, Oakland University writing lecturer since 2008 and guitarist-singer in an Irish folk group, The Codgers. He writes about Warrendale.
- Joel Fluent Greene, a native Detroiter who's a poet, author and event host.
- Vince Guerrieri, a journalist in Elyria, Ohio
- Heather Harper, a Metro Detroit freelancer
- Monica Hogan, a journalist and editor in Washington, D.C., who's a Detroit native
- Bailey Sisoy Isgro, an automotive sculptor and owner of Detroit History tours who lives in Highland Park. Her chapter tells its "Stories Within Stories in a City Within a City.”
- Elias Khalil, owner/general manager of La Feria taps restaurant and a Cass Corridor resident for more than a dozen years.
- William T. Langford IV, an author, educator and 2011 MSU graduate who calls himself "Will the Poet."
- Lhea J. Love, Detroit poet and author
- Michelle Martinez, an environmental justice activist and writer who's a native Detroiter and University of Michigan graduate (2003 and 2008).
- Maureen McDonald, a Detroit freelancer who writes about the Green Acres enclave near 8 Mile and Livernois.
- Gail Rodwan, an attorney at the State Appellate Defender Office in Detroit who writes about Sherwood Forest.
- John G. Rodwan, Jr., author and poet who writes about cycling through the University District.
- Lori Tucker-Sullivan, a writer, editor and adjunct faculty member at Wayne State
- Zoë Villegas, a Detroiter writer who has appeared in Bridge Magazine and Critical Moment., a 2011-16 free print magazine about Detroit arts, culture and politics
- Jeff Waraniak, associate editor at Hour Detroit and a former Thrillist Detroit freelancer
- Hakeem Weatherspoon, a 2014 Denby High graduate now at Michigan State
