Edward McClelland was born in Lansing, Mich., and attended both the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. Like so many Michiganders of his generation, he now lives in Chicago, Ill. Most recently, he is the author of “How to Speak Midwestern,” which The New York Times called “a dictionary wrapped in some serious dialectology inside a gift book.”

His book, “Nothin’ but Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times and Hopes of America’s Industrial Heartland,” was inspired by seeing the Fisher Body plant across the street from his old high school torn down.

After getting his start in journalism at the Lansing State Journal, he later worked as a staff writer for the Chicago Reader. His book “The Third Coast: Sailors, Strippers, Fishermen, Folksingers, Long-Haired Ojibway Painters and God-Save-the-Queen Monarchists of the Great Lakes” won the 2008 Great Lakes Book Award in General Nonfiction. Ted’s writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Salon, Slate, and The Guardian.

Books in order of publication:

Horseplayers: Life at the Track – 2005

The Third Coast: Sailors, Strippers, Fishermen, Folksingers, Long-Haired Ojibway Painters, and God-Save-the-Queen Monarchists of the Great Lakes – 2008

Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President – 2010

Nothin’ But Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America’s Industrial Heartland – 2013

How to Speak Midwestern – 2016

Folktales and Legends of the Middle West – 2018

Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike That Created the Middle Class – 2021