During the 2012 election season, Rana B. Khoury traveled across her home state of Ohio, interviewing Americans hit hardest by the recession. Since 1904, Ohioans have voted for the winner in every presidential election but two. If the nation follows Ohio, she asks, where is America headed? In As Ohio Goes, Khoury tells the stories of students smothered by debt, farmers struggling to make a profit, displaced factory workers, and those made homeless by the housing crisis. Drawing on about 50 interviews conducted over 12 months, Khoury details how the core tenets of the American Dream—that hard work is rewarded and real opportunities exist for upward mobility—are now strained at best, outmoded myths at worst. Rana B. Khoury is pursuing a PhD in political science from Northwestern University. She earned an MA from Georgetown University and a BA from American University. Khoury has lived as far afield as Syria and Singapore, but Ohio is the place she calls home. For this event, Rana will be joined by Martha Bayne, a freelance writer and editor, and the editor-in-chief of Belt Magazine, an independent online magazine covering the postindustrial midwest. Her features and essays have appeared in the Chicago Reader, the Chicago Tribune, Crain's, Occupy.com, Belt, the Baffler, and the independent literary site the Rumpus, where she is the Sunday coeditor. She is also a company member with Chicago's Theater Oobleck and the author of Soup & Bread Cookbook: Building Community One Pot at a Time (Agate, 2011), a narrative cookbook based on the long-running community meal project she organizes at Chicago's Hideout bar.
