Tim Denevi and Margaret Harrell

Author/professor Tim Denevi and I had a delightful time presenting at the Gonzo Fest 2018. The Leo Weekly, Louisville, set up the event in an itinerary:

12-1 p.m.
Writing “Hell’s Angels”: Will the Real Hunter S. Thompson Please Stand Up
Featuring: Timothy Denevi and Margaret Harrell

1:10-1:50 p.m.
Book Signings: Margaret Harrell, Ron Whitehead and Juan Thompson

1:30-2:30 p.m.
The Battle of Michigan Avenue: Chicago 1968, HST and Violence Against Journalists
Panelists: Michael Lindenberger, Timothy Denevi and Ryan Van Velzer
Moderator: Kate Howard

TopsLouisville wrote:

Held at the Main Branch of the Louisville Free Public Library, where Thompson’s mother Virginia worked for many years, GonzoFest Louisville will host two panels, Writing Hell’s Angels: Will the Real Hunter Thompson Please Stand Up? and The Battle of Michigan Avenue: Chicago 1968, Hunter Thompson, and Violence Against Journalists. The festival will also host the Kentucky premiere of the PBS documentary “The Rise and Fall of the Brown Buffalo.”

At the “Writing Hell’s Angels” panel, Tim Denevi, MFA professor at George Mason University, and I gave a program on Hunter, age 29, facing up to challenges in getting his first book, Hell’s Angels, through the publication process at Random House, no small feat under the circumstances of legal challenges and so forth. I was Hunter’s copy editor, the assistant editor to Jim Silberman and the Girl Friday on all matters pertaining to the situation.

Gonzo fest 2018

The News and Tribune gave some background on my fellow presenter:

Denevi’s next book is a work of narrative nonfiction on Hunter S. Thompson. Denevi’s essays on politics, sport, and religion have recently appeared in The Paris Review, New York Magazine, The Normal School, and Literary Hub, where he serves as the nonfiction editor.

With publication imminent, Tim’s second book already has a free preview here on iTunes.

A huge thanks to an unknown diner at the Brown Hotel for the photo of Tim and me.

Hunter Thompson at ranch 1991

The post On Location – Gonzo Fest 2018 appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Romain Thomassin, a French filmmaker, is right now editing down hours and hours of film, made on location in mi-October for a commissioned 15-minute documentary on Hunter S. Thompson and San Francisco – featuring Hell’s Angels.

For that, he interviewed Peter Richardson, David Streitfeld, and me on location, in Hunter’s old hanging-out spots there. Just wrapped up. Now the hours and hours of film are being edited down to fit the show format. Final edits are in Paris in December. Then this will appear on French TV to an audience of 100,000. I’ll alert ou when short doc is posted on their website.

THEN THE JULY GONZOFEST, the final one. To celebrate Hunter S. Thompson’s birthday this year, a stellar lineup for a panel on The Hell’s Angels Letters gathered at Louisville. KY, July 13.  Here are some photos from past Gonzofests I attended.

Gonzofest 2023 was held at the High Horse Bar July 14-15, 2023 from noon until late into the night – A large bar and music venue.  And lots of music there was.

See the brand-new TV interview on the GF by founder Ron Whitehead here.

Attendees flocking from all over the country, snapped up the 400 tickets and made a most lively crowd. As did the expert Friday panel on The Hell’s Angels Letters. This Hunter S. Thompson themed festival is complete with an Art and Literary Contest, local breweries, and live music.

To read more, go here. And here. TO BUY TICKETS, GO HERE. 

Image credit above: graphic artist Mary Fields

Photo credits: Juan and me and my face: artist/poet Jinn Bug

If you would like a signed copy of any of my books, let me know so I can take a copy for you to the Gonzofest! There is also now an e-book option for The Hell’s Angels Letters on Amazon here!

THE HELL’S ANGELS LETTERS PANEL:

Earliest Hints of Gonzo:

Pranks, Agonies, as a Young Hunter Prepares His Launching Pad

Peter Richardson teaches Humanities and American Studies at San Francisco State University. His publications include critically acclaimed books about Hunter S. Thompson, the Grateful Dead, Ramparts magazine, and Carey McWilliams, who edited Thompson at The Nation magazine. He is currently writing a book about Rolling Stone magazine for the University of California Press. 

Margaret Ann Harrell spent thirty adventurous years abroad in Morocco and Europe, returning to the United States in 2001. She is a three-time MacDowell Colony fellow and has authored eighteen books, including The Hell’s Angels Letters: Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic in collaboration with Ron Whitehead (Norfolk Press) and Space Encounters III—Inserting Consciousness into Collisions: A True Fantasy Adventure by the Earth through the Quantum Entangled World. Also, the Keep This Quiet! memoir series and Particle Pinata Poems. She is an editor and an advanced light body meditation teacher as well as a cloud photographer exhibited now and then in Romania, Italy, Bruges (Belgium), and New York City and a mentor to those wanting to go deeper into themselves and their potential.

William McKeen is a professor and the former Chair of the Department of Journalism at Boston University; he is the author or editor of thirteen successful books, including Outlaw Journalist, Mile Marker Zero, and Everybody Had an Ocean. McKeen teaches journalism history, literary journalism, and rock n’ roll and American culture and previously taught at Western Kentucky University, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Florida, where he chaired the department of journalism. Before beginning his teaching career, he was a reporter, then associate editor of The American Spectator and the Saturday Evening Post. Mile Marker Zero is “a tall but telescopic-sight-true tale of Hunter Thompson, Jimmy Buffett, Tom McGuane, and a large cavorting cast running around with sand in their shoes at ‘ground zero for lust and greed and most of the other deadly sins,’ Key West,” wrote Tom Wolfe. McKeen spent his early years in England, Germany, Nebraska, and Texas.

Dr. John F. Brick teaches English, first-year rhetoric, and creative writing at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His scholarship includes a comprehensive annotated variorum of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which traces the development of Thompson’s 1971 classic across extant texts and archival documents and provides comprehensive historical, cultural, and literary context. The result not only recaptures something of the first blush of Vegas‘ satire and profundity but offers unprecedented granularity in examining Thompson’s creative process at the height of his powers. Dr. Brick’s most recent work examines intersections of sportswriting and nationalism. In his spare time he enjoys distance running and cycling, and playing for the Milwaukee Hurling Club.

Timothy Jack Denevi is a professor in the MFA program at George Mason University and the past nonfiction editor of Literary Hub. His work has appeared in the Atlantic, Time, the Paris Review, and New York Magazine, to name a few. And he has been interviewed prolifically, across the spectrum of major news outlets, including the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, following the release of his highly successful Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson’s Manic Ten-Year Crusade against American Fascism. Denevi grew up in Los Gatos, California, and lives near Washington DC. He is a MacDowell Colony fellow and a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Ron Whitehead, co-founder of & Chief of Poetics for GonzoFest, is a Lifetime US National Beat Poet Laureate. His life is newly documented in the film Outlaw Poet: The Legend of Ron Whitehead (2022). “Ron Whitehead is Bodhisattva in Kentucky,” said Lawrence Ferlinghetti. “I have long admired Ron Whitehead. He is crazy as nine loons, and his poetry is a dazzling mix of folk wisdom and pure mathematics,” said Hunter S. Thompson. An award-winning poet and performer, author of 30 books and 40 albums, his words have been translated into twenty languages.

 Art by Grant Goodwine 

Inside the Kitchen

With Rory Feehan at the Frazier 2019

Margaret Harrell – Hunter Thompson

Juan Thompson and me over dinner in the Brown Hotel

Juan Thompson, Margaret Harrell, a firing range

Photo credit: Jinn Bug

Ron Whitehead and Jinn Bug

The post Gonzo NEWS: 2024 French Documentary, PLUS Tim Denevi, William McKeen, Ron Whitehead, Peter Richardson, Dr. John Brick, et al. at Gonzofest in July appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Click to read the marvelous interview conducted by John Kennedy.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself. He sets the interview up this way:

Never for a moment quail before your antagonists. Your fearlessness will be to them a sure token of impending destruction, but to you it will be a sure token of your salvation—a token coming from God. – Philippians 1:28

She says life has taught her that being spiritually fearless and unapologetically yourself is an essential component of identifying and nourishing the God-given gifts and purpose one is born with. She realized that to achieve that for herself she needed to cast aside crippling self-consciousness. Achieving that easier-said-than-done goal, she remembers, was greatly assisted by some of the notable men in her life. In her memoirs, Harrell illustrates how  Thompson, Klonsky, and Mensaert particularly exhibited the sort of authenticity that was vital to helping her learn how to express her true self.

JWK: You’re latest book is called The Hell’s Angels Letters and is a full-color coffee table book that follows up on your Keep This Quiet! memoir as . . . 

Click on the link to read the article.

A marvelous thank-you to the publisher, John Kennedy.

The post On beliefnet.com – How Hunter S. Thompson, Milton Klonsky and Jan Mensaert taught me the power of fearlessness appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Rory Patrick Feehan facilitating a tour at the Speed museum

Below in the photo, the Irish scholar Dr. Rory Patrick Feehan, with a PhD in Hunter Thompson studies, assists in leading a packed-house tour of the exhibit “Gonzo! The Illustrated Guide to Hunter S. Thomson” at the Speed Museum After Hours event Friday night, July 19, with curator Erika Holmquist-Wall in the Loft Gallery. Rory filmed the above video of my intro talk July 20 at the Gonzo Fest panel on changes in journalism since Nixon.

To my right is Ryland Barton, the Capitol bureau chief for Kentucky Public Radio. Beyond him is Olivia Kraft of Insider Louisville. The moderator is Timothy Denevi, the author of Freak Kingdom. Rory’s impressive dissertation will soon be a book available in the U.S.

You can see Rory here for the podcast

HUNTER S. THOMPSON & THE 21ST CENTURY. A DISCUSSION WITH HUNTER S. THOMPSON SCHOLAR DR. RORY PATRICK FEEHAN

In the Panel photo, if you notice a windblown look, I rode to the event with all windows down. It was in the best company imaginable – an exciting way to arrive! One thing I  particularly appreciated from Ryland Barton is his commitment to fact checking. It used to be standard, he pointed out, to have news fact checked after the reporter turned the story in. A team did that. Now, a story can be rushed out, lacking the fact-checking protocol a team provided – which is on the downside of having do-it-yourself journalism. However, there are pluses as well, to getting news not from trained reporters. You have a wider source base. But you don’t necessarily have that commitment to fact checking. Personally, with my training in research, I always prefer solid fact checking. There’s something about starting out on the right foot of a story – getting it right on the ground level.

The post Rory Feehan films my intro at the GF panel on journalism appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Fortunately, I discovered there was more of myself. After exhaustively covering much of my life, I had not peered closely enough into the 1990s, that grand period when my life was pretty haywire by normal standards. Was one book enough to cover it? My garage said no. It revealed forgotten mysteries, thoughts, convictions. I geared up to go in hot pursuit. Here is a glimpse of the new edition of Keep This Quiet! IV: Ancient Secrets Revealed that is just about to come out!

Author’s Note to the 2018 Edition 

I am peering into the past in this edition, at times trying to decipher—from newly retrieved materials in my garage—who I was back then; who this person writing in my name was, this person that I absorbed into me and spoke for, when—uncovering these writings “she” made for herself—I find I didn’t exactly remember “her.” I “remembered” who I am now, and how I thought I got there. Ah. It’s not the case at all. Often, when she speaks for herself, resurrected from the past, I find a different voice. And, I ask myself, if I can’t even remember myself properly, interpret myself in the “past” properly, how on Earth can I speak for someone else? How can any of us? Thus, it is really true, from what I’ve learned in revising Keep This Quiet! IV, that everything is subjective. Even, my internal records of me are subjective, my memory is, with only these newly discovered documents, these confessions and accounts, guiding me into the “past” this time—steering as into an old mine but with a real miner’s light.

The boxes piled up. Some from 2001, when I packed up, left Belgium, and prophetically came to North Carolina, to live. But I never opened them. They went through two moves and one day as they sat in the garage in their original boxes, guarding their secrets, someone warned me they could attract termites. Cardboard could. That did it. Slowly I would move them into other containers. Hopefully throwing out a lot. But that’s not exactly what happened. In writing Keep This Quiet!, volumes one and two, I had the foolproof chronology of Hunter’s letters. But what about Keep This Quiet! IV. Not at all. But I had something else. Letters from me to me. I hadn’t known I was writing them to me, to my future self or my “inner masculine” (animus) energy. To my shadow, whoever. From my shadow even.

So what did I leave, as in a bottle, for my “future self,” me, right now? It fills in a lot of details. For in an Awakening, a lot that we’re  not ready for we discard, interpret wrongly. Now my mature self is ready—for what I recorded fresh off the inner waves: an unexplored, documented history I would never have reconstructed exactly this way. In fact, I didn’t. These writings, some twenty-five years old, inform the previously published edition, shedding new light on spots I dimly recalled; also, time has finally caught up to what was ahead of the times (such as when I, with spirit guides, predicted—in the future—“out of control events,” in particular, grave dangers from misunderstood, highly energized, on-the-move archetypes, such as “Home”).

Inserting them into the earlier account, I listen as with a conch shell to those waves of information my greater self brought, planted,  sometimes prophesizing—that would all have been lost had I not beckoned myself back with interest. This includes what appears to be almost fairytale narrations, of multidimensional meanings. And in this way, looking at these records, I synched my life’s advance notices with now, listening to this very bold, out-of-the-box thinking “past self,” who, indeed, was quite different than what I thought, as you will find out. As she made her records before nontime became Time and unity consciousness and my multidimensional self expressed itself further (as we all do) in real-time variations of some of these and other insights all over the globe NOW.

 

The post On How I Came to Write the Revised Edition of KTQ! IV: Ancient Secrets Revealed appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

A glimpse from the about-to-be published revised fourth memoir, Ancient Secrets Revealed, takes us to Tienen, Belgium, in 1991. Willy had just died:

Thrown off balance—but excited—by the energy beginning to permeate the apartment Willy and I had shared, I felt the need to reach out to an old friend, though I had close female friends in a weekly “Inner Landscaping” course in self-development in Brussels and in a mystical Tai Chi course in Leuven. But I wanted someone with a longer view of me, who wouldn’t laugh outright at the fact that since Willy’s death I had a nonphysical bell sounding in my apartment in response to thoughts. Who could I call? Someone who took “weirdness” in stride? Hunter .

Not that I told him right away about the bell or even about Willy, but I broached the topic of psychic experiences and he listened. At least, he didn’t dismiss them outright, but said he preferred the word “intuition.”

After numerous long calls January–April 1991, we found a window of opportunity to meet. It latched onto feelings never lost. We
both felt the old tie that had never broken stirred up. However, think about the unknown territory we had to cross now. Hunter did not know me as a mystic. He had only a clue or two about what was going on in my apartment—about which the reader will get more input coming right up. I did not know the extent of his increased drug use. It didn’t matter. We knew something more basic, which held on despite these important things that should have driven us apart. Would it, when we met?

The post Bell Sounding to Thoughts – and Hunter Thompson appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

A Gathering of Angels Meetup Monthly Meetup

She gives details below and also here. where you can join and sign up to attend. Or just drop in if seating is not at capacity. Diana writes:

This meeting will introduce our audience to some of our local metaphysical and/or healing authors, who will share wisdom from their work to assist us in understanding ourselves, our journey, our wondrous univer

• A Gathering of Angels PRESENTS 

  Wisdom from the Messengers
  Date: Thursday, September 14, 7 – 9 PM
  Location: Dancing Moon Books,
  1840 Wake Forest Road, Raleigh
  Hosted by: Diana Henderson with Margaret A. Harrell and Maryphyllis Horn
  Cost: $11 – $33 (Sliding scale; $11 minimum)

  Those who write books on healing, metaphysics and/or intuition are here as Divine messengers or emissaries to offer humanity solutions for walking the path consciously and moving through this great shift of the ages. At this meeting we’ll be joined by some of our local messengers to offer insights from their books and/or lives/practices. Each one will present for about 30 minutes and share concepts or techniques to further our understanding. This meeting will include:

  • Presentations from the following authors: Margaret A. Harrell, Maryphyllis Horn and Diana Henderson
  

  • Meditation, information and/or experiential exercise with each author

  • A crystal for each attendee and exercise to work with it from Diana’s upcoming book
  

  • Door prize drawing
  

  Please bring a pen and paper if you wish to make notes.

  In her most recent book, Keep This Quiet! IV: More Initiations, Margaret A. Harrell dives deeper into the world of visions, computer-PK (mental influence over the computer), divine guidance, Psychologist Carl Jung, and science. Her path spans spirituality and the quantum mind, Hunter Thompson and the Indian guru Dhyanyogi-ji, whose tradition of Kundalini Maha Yoga she is initiated into. Many traditions join hands in this book to make “a book of wonder—spirit, ghosts, hope, mysticism, mystery,” writes Alice Osborn, author of Heroes without Capes. This book is available at Dancing Moon, on Amazon and on Margaret’s website, www.MargaretHarrell.com, where you can learn more about her other books and considerable accomplishments and honors. In addition to her work as a writer, editor and photographer, she teaches light body meditation courses in the DaBen and Orin school of LuminEssence, which explore the dynamics and untapped potential of ourselves in various translations of our energy.

  Maryphyllis Horn, M.Ed., is a renowned shamanic practitioner and metaphysical interfaith minister. She specializes in soul retrieval, shamanic journeying, Ancestral Lines Clearing©, Karmic Matrix Clearing©, past life regression, and spiritual hypnotherapy. At this meeting, she’ll present information from her book, Transforming the Soul: Beyond Soul Retrieval. The experiential portion will help you to know what it’s like to relate to a retrieved soul part. Maryphyllis is also the author of Whispering with Animals and Ancestral Lines Clearing. You may find her books at Dancing Moon and other locations locally as well as on Amazon.com. Learn more about her and her amazing work at http://www.soulshaman.com.

  Reiki Master Teacher, Intuitive, Author and Ascension Artist Diana Henderson founded the Order of Michael in 2002. She practices several alternative healing modalities and teaches classes in all levels of Reiki, Angels, Intuition, Crystals, and more. She is also the founder of Sacred Heart Soul Healing, a new yet ancient healing modality for the Golden Age. Much of her work as a healer/teacher/messenger focuses on assisting others in opening to their gifts and enhancing their spiritual connection—hastening the journey to enlightenment. Diana is the author of the novel Grandfather Poplar. She is currently working on three other books. Kindred of the Crystal Kingdom, which is in the editing phase, will be the subject for this evening. Keep reading here.

The post “A Gathering of Angels”- September 14 appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Just today the newest review came in. The new commentary is in the second paragraph – where the reviewer finds the book “an inherently fascinating, engaging thought-provoking, and consistently compelling read from beginning to end.” Check it out. I am most grateful!

Bethany’s Bookshelf

Synopsis: In “Keep This Quiet!: More Initiations”, author Margaret A. Harrell dives even deeper into the world of visions, computer-PK (mental influence over the computer), divine guidance, the psychologist Carl Jung, and science. The fourth volume in a thoughtful and occasionally iconoclastic series, “Keep This Quiet” takes place in the ’90s in Tienen, Belgium, where assorted parapsychological phenomena accompany the death of her housemate. Quickly checking in with Hunter Thompson, she winds up at Owl Farm, then returns (via the Bay Area) to her Flemish home base. Initiations welcome her back and she goes further onto her path, which spans spirituality and the quantum mind, Hunter Thompson and the Indian guru Dhyanyogi-ji, whose tradition of Kundalini Maha Yoga she is initiated into.

Critique: “Keep This Quiet!: More Initiations” is an inherently fascinating, engaging thought-provoking, and consistently compelling read from beginning to end. Of special note is the inclusion of exercises to offer the reader deftly crafted practical help in learning how they can work with metaphysical energy. While very highly recommended for community and academic library Metaphysical Studies collections, it should be noted for students and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that “Keep This Quiet!” is also available in a Kindle edition ($6.95).

The post Midwest Book Review – Keep This Quiet! IV appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Owl Farm ranch house

The post The Red Shark and Owl Farm appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.

Then at the top, the psychologist Carl Jung, founder of depth psychology and the serious study of images, fairytales, psychological types, and other topics that bear his stamp.

Next is Wolfgang Pauli, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was fascinated with his own dreams and used them as a way to expand his consciousness and understand his “whole” self better. Jung and Pauli exchanged thoughts, going into quantum physics and depth psychology together in a fascinating correspondence.

Pauli thought he dreamed for collective reasons as well as personal – that his dreams were representative of archetypes and that his exploration of them with Jung helped society. Jung thought the same and discussed these dreams in books, without identifying Pauli. The number 137 haunted Pauli, being mysteriously associated with his scientific studies and himself personally. Pauli was so synchronistic that the moment he realized he was in hospital number 137, though he was only 58 years old, he felt sure he would never leave there alive.

Indeed, that was the room in which he died. As Wikipedia puts it, “In 1958, Pauli was awarded the Max Planck medal. In that same year, he fell ill with pancreatic cancer. When his last assistant, Charles Enz, visited him at the Rotkreuz hospital in Zurich, Pauli asked him: “Did you see the room number?” It was number 137. Throughout his life, Pauli had been preoccupied with the question of why the fine structure constant, a dimensionless fundamental constant, has a value nearly equal to 1/137. Pauli died in that room on 15 December 1958.”

The post ID-ing Cover Figures – KTQ! III appeared first on Margaret A. Harrell.