Truevine (Macy)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1964
• Raised—Ubana, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Bowling Green University
• Awards—Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism (more below)
• Currently—lives in Roanoke, Virginia


Beth Macy is an American journalist and author of two works of non-fiction: Factory Town: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local—and Helped Save an American Town (2014) and Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South  (2016).

Raised in Urbana, Ohio, an industrial town, Macy's mother was a line worker in an airplane factory and watched other people’s children while the parents worked. As Macy has pointed out, this was a time, back in the '70s and early '80s, when one it was still possible to raise a family on working wages and, with a little Federal aid, manage to send your children to college.

Macy attended Bowling Green University (on a Pell Grant) and graduated in 1986 with a degree in journalism. Following brief stints in Columbus, Ohio, and Savannah, Georgia, in 1989 Macy found herself in Roanoke, Virginia, where she began a 25-year career at the Roanoke Times. She won countless awards for stories that highlighted teen pregnancy, immigrant populations, and other often overlooked topics in the Roanoke area.

Journalism awards
Macy's 2006 series on immigrant families won several national honors, including a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, a Columbia University race reporting prize and inclusion in "The Best Newspaper Writing: 2007-2008."

In 2008, Macy produced a multi-media presentation about the challenges facing the area's seniors and caregivers. The series won a Documentary Project of the Year (from Pictures of the Year International), the Associated Press Managing Editors' Award for online convergence, a Casey Medal and, the Virginia Press Association's top prize for public-service reporting.

In 2010, Macy won a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University. Her November 2010 story about cholera in Haiti won the 2011 Associated Press Managing Editors award for international reporting. (Author bio adapted by LitLovers from various sources.)