WHEELING, W.Va. – A Wheeling poet who writes about industrial decline and job loss in the Rust Belt is a recipient of a $25,000 creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Allison Pitinii Davis, PhD is the author of Line Study of a Motel Clerk (Baobab Press, 2017–available here). The work is about her family’s unique business, a truck stop and laundromat in the Youngstown area that’s operated for 60 years.
She grew up in Youngstown, Ohio in the shadow of the former General Motors Lordstown plant where her aunts worked dayshift while putting themselves through college at night to earn their degrees in English. She credits them with instilling in her a love of art and poetry.
Ohio Valley readers may relate to her writings on labor issues and strikes since she focuses one facet of her work on the major 1972 auto strike at General Motors Lordstown. The plant closed in 2019. She explores how job loss and strikes affect people and their communities.
i’m just kind of thinking about What it means to lose something so important in the region that was the home of one of the really big auto plants. It was the biggest auto strike in American history, especially in auto history… what it means for that plant to close, what it means for the area, what it means for continued job loss in the area.
Allison Pitinii Davis, PhD, 2025 NEA Fellow
She also writes about motherhood and family life in the Ohio Valley and Wheeling.
It’s also about motherhood and about Postpartum mood disorders and raising kids in the Ohio Valley .
Allison Pitinii Davis, PhD, 2025 NEA Fellow
She says art is a profound responsibility and it can bring joy to people’s lives. The NEA fellowship will allow her to more focus on her poetry. She teaches poetry workshops and gives readings in the Wheeling area.
For more information on Pitinii Davis and her work visit her website here.
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