My conversation with Robert P. Jones, author of THE END OF WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICA (2017), WHITE TOO LONG (2021), and THE HIDDEN ROOTS OF WHITE SUPREMACY (2023). Please consider subscribing to Jones’s Substack White Too Long.

From the City Lights website:

According to Pete Candler, “Whether we are good at telling stories, the truth is every human being is a story bearer.”

Candler himself is quite good at telling stories, a fact further revealed in his new collection, “A Deeper South: The Beauty, Mystery, and Sorrow of the Southern Road.” The book is structured in the form of a road trip, replete with the meanderings, side-roads, and traffic stops that deliver the magic of being on the road. Although the trip is presented as a single movement, it’s actually a composite of multiple trips that Candler has taken over the last 25 years.

On Monday’s edition of “City Lights,” Candler spoke to host Lois Reitzes on what drove him to take these trips.

LISTEN HERE:

Pete Candler wears many creative hats. He’s a photographer and maker of short films—all of it self-taught—and he’s also an author and recovering academic.

His new book, titled A Deeper South, is both an internal and external travelogue over 25 years of road trips through the American South. We’ll also talk about leaving a tenured professorship at Baylor University to pursue his creative impulses, why he has always been drawn to photographing places rather than people and his discovery of a family history too close for comfort to the vestiges of slavery.

Visit The Overlook webpage.

Book talk at Malaprops Bookstore in Asheville with Melanie Bianchi

Book talk with John T Edge 

The official launch of A Deeper South at the former home of Margaret Mitchell in Midtown Atlanta, Georgia. Moderated by Adam Koplan and introduced by Tom Johnson.

The Road to Unforgetting gathers 175 of Pete Candler’s black-and-white film photographs from road trips across the American South from 1997 to 2022, along with his insightful essay on the imaginative potential of the unplanned detour. A meditation on “back-roading” with a film camera as a spiritual exercise, Road documents lesser-known, often unmarked, sites in the history of the South that exist off the main drag of collective memory. A powerful collaboration of word and image in search of deeper truths, Road points towards a more complete understanding of America’s most singular region.

Watch Pete’s Author Talk at The Atlanta History Center in May 2023

The Eugene I. Earnhardt Speaker Series is a tribute to the legacy of Gene Earnhardt, a former professor at Pfeiffer University for 30 years. The series aims to provide students and the community with a real-life connection to history and contemporary events. The principal organizer of the series, Dr. Michael Thompson, a Professor of History at Pfeiffer and the Dean of the University’s Undergraduate College and Director of its Honors Program, believes that the series plays a vital role in challenging students to think critically and beyond the confines of their classrooms. “We are excited to have Pete Candler as part of the Eugene I. Earnhardt Speaker Series,” said Thompson. “His work has significantly impacted the literary and academic communities. We are confident his insights will inspire and challenge our students.” The Eugene I. Earnhardt Speaker Series Endowment is funded by a generous gift from the Earnhardt family and will support future guests. Donations to the endowment can be made at www.pfeiffer.edu/give.