Regional journalists and authors Monica Hesse (The Washington Post) and Beth Macy (The Roanoke Times) join Pulitzer Prize recipient Eric Eyre (Charleston Gazette-Mail) in a discussion of important issues impacting communities nationwide—including the opioids crisis and the effects of economic decline on rural communities—and the vital role of local journalism to an informed citizenry. Community questions follow the panel discussion, moderated by Dr. Reginald Shareef (Radford University).
Event begins approximately 3:16 into the video.
We thank The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their generous support of this initiative and the Pulitzer Prizes for their partnership. Presented by Virginia Humanities, the Virginia Center for the Book, and With Good Reason radio.
About the Speakers:
Monica Hesse is the national bestselling author of the true crime love story American Fire and the Edgar Award-winning young adult historical mystery novel Girl in the Blue Coat. She is a feature writer for The Washington Post, and she was winner of the Society for Feature Journalism’s Narrative Storytelling award and a finalist for a Livingston Award and a James Beard Award. “Hesse has managed to wring tension and excitement out of a story with a known ending. She also superbly conveys the folkways of the Eastern Shore and the disruptive, confusing effect the fires had on its community.”—The New York Times
Beth Macy, author of Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America, is from Roanoke, Virginia, where her reporting for The Roanoke Times has won more than a dozen awards, including a Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard. “[Dopesick is] a harrowing, deeply compassionate dispatch from the heart of a national emergency… a masterwork of narrative journalism, interlacing stories of communities in crisis with dark histories of corporate greed and regulatory indifference.”—New York Times Book Review
Eric Eyre received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, recognizing his work as a statehouse reporter for the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette-Mail. He also received the Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) Medal, Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize in Education Reporting from the Education Writers Association, National Headliners Award, Society of American Business Editors and Writers award, Gerald Loeb Award for business writing, and an Association of Health Care Journalists award. He also was the recipient of a Kaiser Family Foundation fellowship.
