Author Beth Macy Returns to The Historic Masonic Theatre With Her New Book
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Clifton Forge, VA (Oct. 14, 2025) - Beth Macy, bestselling author of Dopesick returns to The Historic Masonic Theatre on Thursday, October23 at 7:00 pm to talk about her new book, “PAPER GIRL: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America”.
In the same way that her bestselling book Dopesick (and the Peabody Award-winning television series, filmed in Clifton Forge) provided the compassionate reporting and powerful portraits necessary to understand and empathize with those affected by our national opioid crisis, now PAPER GIRL: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America delivers the stories we need to appreciate the changes that have rocked our small towns, broken family bonds, and led to this moment.
In 2020, the decline of Macy’s mother’s health brought Macy back to an Urbana that had dramatically hardened since her youth. 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.
This was not an assignment Macy had ever imagined taking on, but after her mother’s death, she felt compelled to figure out what happened to Urbana in the forty years since she’d left. The result is an astonishing book. By zooming us straight into the heart of one place, Macy brings into focus our most urgent set of national issues.
PAPER GIRL is a gift of courage, empathy, and insight. Beth Macy has turned to face the darkness in her family and community, people she loves wholeheartedly, even the ones she sometimes struggles to like. And in facing the truth—in person, with respect—she has found sparks of human dignity that she used to light a signal fire of warning but also of hope.
PAPER GIRL will be available for sale on October 23 and Beth Macy will read and sign books. DOPESICK will also be available for sale.
“Journalist and Dopesick author Macy poignantly interweaves her personal history with that of her decaying hometown in this perceptive account…Timely, clear-eyed, and empathetic, her insights provide a welcome salve for a festering social wound.”—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“One of the most humane and insightful journalists working today, Macy has triumphed with Paper Girl. It weaves together her personal story with her urgent wish to understand how her hometown lost its way economically, educationally, and emotionally.” Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author of The Orchid Thief.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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. She lives in Roanoke, Virginia.
To learn more about events at The Historic Masonic Theatre, please visit www.historicmasonictheatre.com. | | | | | |
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