Beth Macy

Beth Macy is a Virginia-based journalist who writes about outsiders and underdogs. Raised poor in a small Ohio community, she is the award-winning author of three New York Times bestselling books examining rural communities left behind by corporate greed and political indifference.

Her first book, Factory Man, explored the aftermath of globalization and won a J. Anthony Lukas Prize. Dopesick was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal, won the L.A. Times Book Prize for Science and Technology, and was described as a “masterwork of narrative nonfiction” by The New York Times. Dopesick was made into a Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning Hulu series; Macy was an executive producer and cowriter on the show. Her 2022 book, Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis, was a follow-up to Dopesick and explored on-the-ground solutions to the nation’s drug epidemic. A 2010 Nieman Fellow for Journalism at Harvard, Macy has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. Her next book, Paper Girl, is a combination memoir and reported examination of the rural-urban divide told through the lenses of declining upward mobility, political polarization, and the decimation of local and regional news.