Connor Towne O'Neill: "Down Along with That Devil's Bones: A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy"

This is the fifty-second episode of "Talking with Authors" by HEC Media and HEC Books. We're a program dedicated to speaking with some of the best selling authors around, covering many different genres.

Today, our guest is journalist Connor Towne O'Neill. We spoke with him via Zoom in October of 2020 about his book "Down Along with That Devil's Bones: A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy" by publisher Algonquin Books.

Writer Connor Towne O’Neill is a Pennsylvania born journalist that has had work in thoroughly northern publications like New York Magazine, and has been a producer on the Southern history based NPR podcast, “White Lies”. He’s a in instructor at Auburn University in Alabama now and researched and penned the book “Down Along with That Devil’s Bones” after more than 5 years of trying to pick apart some of the reasons why monuments to Confederates are still so common, like ones to the slave-owning, Southern General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first head of the Ku Klux Klan. In the book he explores not just the odes to Forrest, but to other racist and problematic figures from Southern history. And he digs into how even those from the North, like himself, that wish they were absolved from the current presence of the memorials, could and should feel otherwise.  We’ll explore more details of the book and of the life experience of journalist and writer Connor Towne O’Neill on this edition of Talking With Authors from HEC Media and HEC Books.

Our host and interviewer this time is Paul Schankman.

HEC Media is a production company out of St. Louis, Missouri.  With the help of independent bookstore Left Bank Books and St. Louis County Library, we are able to sit down with these amazing writers and thought leaders to discuss their work, their inspiration, and what makes them special. You can watch video versions of most of our interviews at hecmedia.org.

Interviewer, producer, and editor for this episode - Paul Schankman
Supervising Producer - Julie Winkle
Production Support - Jayne Ballew & Christina Chastain
HEC Media Executive Director - Dennis Riggs
Talking with Authors Podcast Executive Producer - Christina Chastain
Podcast Audio Editing - Ben Smith
Podcast Producer - Rod Milam
Podcast Host - Rod Milam

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