Authors Macy and House speak at Fox festival at Mountain Empire Community College

BIG STONE GAP — How do you write about your hometown, the people you know and do it honestly?Two nationally known authors shared their experience on that question Wednesday at a panel discussion during the John Fox Jr. Literary Festival at Mountain Empire Community College.Beth Macy — known for her book "Dopesick" on the opioid crisis in central Appalachia — and Appalachian author Silas House joined UVA Center for Appalachian Studies co-director Amy Clark to talk about their experiences and family helped shape their work.Macy, a former reporter for the Roanoke Times and now a Democratic congressional candidate in the 2026 midterms, said her childhood in Urbana, Ohio, was guided by her mother and grandmother, who taught her to read before she started school. While not in a high-income family, she said that familial support and the work by a Rhode Island U.S. senator in the early 1970s helped her succeed."My life was saved by a multi-millionaire at birth named Sen. Claiborne Pell," Macv said of the namesake of the Pell Grant program that paid for her four years in college."Now, a poor kid from the same demographic would get about 30% of their college paid for, which is why community colleges are so important," Macy added.Over the past three decades, the U.S. has seen three major shifts that have caused societal shift, Macy said: globalization and business deregulation; the opioid crisis defined by Purdue Pharma and OxyContin; and the rise of big tech. Her three nonfiction works — "Factory Man," "Dopesick" and "Paper Girl" — all address aspects of those shifts.Throughout the panel discussion, Macy mentioned her brother, who would goad her about his support for Donald Trump. Over the years, she said she had learned the importance of understanding the people she interviewed as a reporter and as she wrote her books. That understanding developed in many ways, she added, from interviewing a convicted drug dealer for "Dopesick" to changes in her relationship with her brother.Macy said that, after moving to a new home, she asked her brother to help do some repairs and help rig some fishing poles. During a day of fishing, the conversation led to him asking about her non-binary child and how they are doing. That led to a conversation about their band and music and focusing on family.House, whose childhood and family life in eastern Kentucky have defined several novels about life in central Appalachia, said writing about his hometown has involved a balance between depicting the truth of life and avoiding oversimplification."The main thing I want to do is represent my life and my people in the best way I can," said House, "but I also want to tell the truth my place. I believe if you love a place, you must also criticize it and you must also hold it to task to be the best it can be."Too many people overromanticize their place, House said, and that can be as dangerous as attacking it."I don't want to romanticize or vilify it," House said. "I just want to show it as a place full of complicated people, and I want outsiders to be given historical and cultural context so they can have a better understanding of its people."Both Macy and House stressed the importance of historical context in their writing about the region. She cited an 1884 Richmond Times Dispatch letter to the editor about post-Civil War morphine over-prescription and addiction as affecting her work on "Dopesick.""This scourge will leave no one behind," Macy recalled of the letter, "and if we let it keep going, we will become so divided as to elect a despot." House said his novel "Parchment of Leaves" was inspired by the life of his great grandmother Martha Sizemore, who faced social challenges as someone of Cherokee blood in — by the standards of the early 1900s — was in a mixed marriage. The diary she kept not only informed the book but helped shape other works. "Eli the Good" drew on House's life as the son of a Vietnam veteran.House's "Same Sun Here," about an Appalachian boy with a pen pal in India, shows how "we are all global citizens," House added."I have had family stop talking to me, not so much for my fiction but because of my nonfiction, my journalism," said House. "That's hurtful, but it's important that you've got to give grace to people. But we also have to demand not to be doormats as well.""I'll say I'm always going to be honest," said Macy. "I'm going to be open, I'm going to take notes, I'm going to record on my phone. But at the end of this I'm going to take all the times that we talked and I'm going to fact check this and I'm going to read you your part for errors of interpretation or fact. I make mistakes, I'm human. I misinterpret things all the time.""At some point we have to be responsible for what we're putting out there," said Macy."It's really important for me as a fiction writer, and of course for nonfiction, to never write out of a place of vengeance," said House. "For the most part, that's going to come through to people that you're writing this to be fair minded."