'Dopesick' movie wins a Peabody; author of book says her next one, about solutions to opioid crisis, will be out Aug. 15

"Dopesick" co-writers Ben Rubin, left, and Eoghan O’Donnell,
right, with star Michael Keaton and book author Beth Macy

"Dopesick," the streaming-video series starring Michael Keaton and based on the novel by Beth Macy of Roanoke, won the first Peabody Award announced this week the University of Georgia.

In accepting, Keaton said “Tackling such an important issue as the opioid crisis in America was not only daunting but well worth it. “To address the devastation that has been brought on by the Sackler family and big Pharma, and still honor the people in Appalachia, which in this case is what we chose as the location, and still show enormous respect for these people, all this is really gratifying for me.”

Meanwhile, Macy tells her readers via email, "My fourth book, Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis, will publish on Aug. 16, and it’s available for pre-order now. . . . If Dopesick was about the origins of the overdose crisis, Raising Lazarus is about the solutions—some of them quite surprising. The book features a fascinating chorus, from gritty activists willing to risk arrest to creative treatment providers, harm reductionists and peer specialists who are flat-out miracle workers. "