Author Beth Macy "Paper Girl" lecture with audience Q&A discussion

Please join Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures as they welcome Beth Macy who will discuss her latest book, Paper Girl.

From one of our most acclaimed chroniclers of the forces eroding America’s social fabric, her most personal and powerful work: a reckoning with the changes that have rocked her own beloved small Ohio hometown.

Urbana, Ohio, was not a utopia when Beth Macy grew up there in the ’70s and ’80s, certainly not for her family. Her dad was known as the town drunk, which hurt, as did their poverty. But Urbana had a healthy economy and thriving schools, and Macy had middle-class schoolmates whose families became her role models. Though she left for college on a Pell Grant and then a faraway career in journalism, she still clung gratefully to the place that helped raise her.

But as Macy’s mother’s health declined in 2020, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her town had dramatically hardened. Macy had grown up as the paper girl, delivering the local newspaper, which was the community’s civic glue. Now she found scant local news and precious little civic glue. Yes, much of the work that once supported the middle class had gone away, but that didn’t begin to cover the forces turning Urbana into a poorer and angrier place. Absenteeism soared in the schools and in the workplace as a mental health crisis gripped the small city. Some of her old friends now embraced conspiracies. In nearby Springfield, Macy watched as her ex-boyfriend—once the most liberal person she knew—became a lead voice of opposition against the Haitian immigrants, parroting false talking points throughout the 2024 presidential campaign.

This was not an assignment Beth Macy had ever imagined taking on, but after her mother’s death, she decided to figure out what happened to Urbana in the forty years since she’d left. The result is an astonishing book that, by taking us into the heart of one place, brings into focus our most urgent set of national issues.

Beth Macy has won more than two dozen national journalism awards, including a Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard University, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Dopesick, which was made into a Peabody Award-winning series for Hulu. Three of her books have been New York Times bestsellers.
Paper Girl is available to pre-order through our partner bookseller White Whale Bookstore.

Paper Girl is available to pre-order through bookseller White Whale Bookstore that will be set-up in the lobby with many books available for purchase by other authors that have been part of the Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures series.

TICKETS In person tickets should be available at the door. For online tickets (see below), it is OK to wait until the day of the lecture.
In person tickets start at $31 for the upper balcony (where it is easier for a group to sit together) Beth Macy | Official Ticket Source | Carnegie Music Hall | Mon, Dec 8, 2025, 7:30pm | Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures Tickets may also be purchased by phone (412) 622-8866 or at the door starting at 6:30 PM

Online tickets are $31 Beth Macy Online | Official Ticket Source | Online Event | Mon, Dec 8, 2025, 7:30pm | Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures The viewing link will be emailed on the day of the event. Viewers will have access to the recorded program for one week.

Parking While many visitors find street parking, the Carnegie Museum has plenty of parking which is conveniently located near the museum entrance at the corner of Forbes Ave & S. Craig Street. Here is a link with more info about parking and directions http://cmoa.org/visit/directions-maps-parking/