Beth Macy Author Talk
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Beth Macy, award winning reporter and best selling author, joins us for an intimate and timely conversation. Her work covering left-behind rural communities is especially helpful in understanding the current political polarization and fracturing of families. Her latest book, Paper Girl, is a page-turner at the top of President Obama's 2025 reading list. Former award-winning TV reporter and anchor Gayle Jessup White will serve as moderator.
Event includes reception with refreshments and book sales by Stone Soup Books.
FREE BUT RSVP TO SAVE YOUR SEAT
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Beth Macy grew up poor in a small Ohio town, the first in her family to go to college, and built her adult life in Roanoke, where she and her husband raised two kids on a reporter’s and a teacher’s salary. For 25 years at The Roanoke Times, Beth covered the stories of people and communities across western Virginia, listening without judgment and digging for the truth even when it was uncomfortable.
As a best-selling author, Beth earned national recognition for her deeply reported books about families, work, opportunity, and the forces shaping life in rural America. Her first book, Factory Man, chronicled how globalization reshaped small towns. Her book Dopesick exposed how opioid executives preyed on vulnerable communities and fought to conceal the damage they caused. The book helped shift America’s understanding of addiction and was turned into an Emmy- and Peabody-winning Hulu series she helped produce and write.
Her latest book, Paper Girl, continues her lifelong work of telling honest stories about home, struggle, and what it means to build a better future.
Gayle Jessup White is the first public relations and community engagement officer at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and is the author of the book, Reclamation: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant’s Search for Her Family’s Lasting Legacy. She started her career at the New York Times, and has written and spoken extensively about her work at Monticello, the legacies of slavery, and her family’s contributions to American history.
2:00 PM, Sunday, March 15 at Shenandoah Valley Art Center, 416 W. Main St., Waynesboro, VA.