Bestselling Appalachian Author Seeks Office: An Anti-Vance

Tuesday, December 30, 2025

For a certain class of book-reading American " the type with a taste for deeply reported stories about left-behind parts of the country " [Beth Macy], the woman running for [the Appalachia-based 6th Congressional District of Virginia], is something of a household name. An award-winning reporter for the Roanoke Times for 25 years, she's the author of five nonfiction books, including three of particular note: Factory Man, her critically acclaimed 2014 debut about globalization's ravaging of Virginia's furniture industry; Dopesick, a 2018 tome on America's opioid crisis that turned into a Hulu series; and the recently released Paper Girl, a memoir about her own hardscrabble childhood and the plight of her fading Ohio hometown.

Posted by Dbt2 at 09:22 AM | 3 COMMENTS | permalink

If she wins " a big if in a district that hasn't elected a Democrat since 1990 " Macy, 61, will be the second writer of at least one bestselling book about hard-hit Appalachia to get elected to federal office. The first, of course, is former Ohio senator and current vice president JD Vance. Macy and Vance both grew up in hollowed-out factory towns in families marked by trauma and drama and drinking or drug-doing. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy proved to be a political launching pad; Macy's books could be, too.

Comments

FWIW: The Roanoke Times is a serious good paper. Not afraid at all to tackle local issues, and not just small-city boosterism.

#1 | Posted by Dbt2 at 2025-12-30 09:23 AM