A staff writer for the Millions, which the New York Times calls the “indispensable literary site,” as well as the editor of Belt Magazine, Ed Simon has contributed his characteristically engaging cultural criticism to almost every major American literary publication, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Paris Review Daily, the New Republic, and the Washington Post. Simon’s articles have covered everything from the intersection of robotics and religion to the heretical origins of the sonnet, from Thomas Morton’s forgotten pagan settlement in colonial New England to a cultural history of the color black. Simon is the author of several books, including the top-selling An Alternative History of Pittsburgh, Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology, and, in fall 2023, Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology, which promises to be the standard text on the subject for popular readers.