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

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The previous interview I did with her bounced all the way toVienna, where it sparked the plan to found a Gonzofest Vienna – whose first event then fizzled and started percolating in Dublin, Ireland. But it was a tall lift to find an untaken venue in Dublin on that short notice.

So we luckily were offered Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans – Gonzofest 2025. Putting GF Europe on hold, we are considering Italy 2026. Meanwhile, we have a tremendous lineup of talent ready to jump in a plane. More on this New Orleans event at its website.

Betsy Wurzel writes:

We reflect on the unpredictability of life’s twists and turns, sharing personal anecdotes of remarkable synchronicities. Additionally, Margaret delves into her latest revised-edition book, BEYOND 3-D: KEEP THIS QUIET! III, discussing its inspiration and the transformative potential of her LuminEsscence Light Body work courses in facilitating spiritual growth and emotional healing.

Margaret also recommends THE HELL’s ANGELS LETTERS: Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Harrell, and THE MAKING of AN AMERICAN CLASSIC, available on norfolkpress.com. This interview provides a captivating glimpse into Margaret A. Harrell’s diverse body of work and the eagerly anticipated International Gonzofest.

She was Hunter S. Thompson’s first book editor, helping craft the Hells Angels book. She was also a friend and, as readers of her book Keep This Quiet! know, “special friend.” Some even say she was a muse at the most critical time of his career… she certainly pulls no punches during a live interview from Louisville.

Being interviewed by people that gifted, you cannot help but come up with fascinating material. I am grateful that they pulling me aside at the July 2021 Gonzofest in Louisville for an impromptu interview. (Planned by them.)

Also, recently, before that, did my first Interviewed with Betsy Wurtzel

on Passionate World Talk Radio. It was a lot of fun and roamed over many of the topics I’m most interested in. Betsy wrote:

I highly recommend reading Keep THIS Quiet! Too about Margaret A. Harrell ‘s fascinating life!

Please listen to my interview with Margaret A. Harrell about this book and how these 3 men helped Margaret to be fearless!

Matt Hahn and Margaret Harrell, Gonzofest ’23

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Cover design: Deborah Perdue

I think this may be my most ambitious book yet. And most playful. I say to myself: Who wrote this?

order at Amazon.

Sir Isaac Newton famously complained about “action at a distance.” How was it possible, he wrote, that gravity, or attraction, operated between objects without physical contact? Well, jump to the twenty-first century, and we have a lot more to say about that. Readers will enjoy a brilliant, outrageous, playful exploration of quantum physics in everyday life, from a secret interplay of TV plots with us, in electricity, to other speculations, founded in the author’s decades of initiations as well as being an original thinker and a scholar.
An unusual feature of the illustrations in AN UNDERGROUND PRINCIPIA is a technique called “computer-PK,” or mind through matter in the creation of printouts that refocus the text on-screen in the printing so that nothing happens twice. As in Einstein’s “Credo,” the author exemplifies: “The most beautiful and deepest experience can have is the sense of the mysterious.”

In SPACE ENCOUNTERS II: AN UNDERGROUND PRINCIPIA, Margaret Ann Harrell leaps beyond existentialism, beyond cellular molecular electric, beyond epistemology, beyond phenomenology, beyond quantum physics, beyond first second and third person narrative, beyond fourth person singular, beyond tragedy, beyond comedy, beyond all genres, beyond space and time, beyond yin and yang, beyond dualism in all its manufactured forms, beyond encyclopedic knowledge, beyond gravity, beyond electromagnetics, beyond nondualism, beyond death, beyond 3-D, beyond sound and light to where there is no distance to where there are no gaps to where the ever changing creative imagination is the host of all and everything. SPACE ENCOUNTERS II: AN UNDERGROUND PRINCIPIA is a masterpiece, a miracle.
From start to finish beginning to end I was blown away by the brilliance the radiance the outrageousness the playfulness the hilarity the footnotes the simultaneous multiple conversations all of it!

It’s talking my language, and it’s a language that’s never been spoken! Ha! And Aha!

—Ron Whitehead, U.S. National Lifetime Beat Poet Laureate

Margaret Harrell has the most open-ended and far-reaching mind of anyone I know.

—Rhea A. White, Director, the Exceptional Human Experience Network

But who is ready for this culmination of a lifetime, written with multiple spirit guides, or let’s say packs of inspiration? Master Taiji teacher points this out:

My biggest concern is that I have no idea how many people will be able to grasp the depth of the principles you describe. It is amazing enough that you take a lifetime of experiences and connect them into a driving force that leads to the realization of one’s purpose.
Even more amazing is that you include the most subtle levels of existence that play a role in these processes. An Underground Principia connects life purpose, spirituality, depth psychology, and quantum physics into one all-encompassing movement.
Most breathtakingly, by reading An Underground Principia, the reader can gain the insight that all of this is happening, not in one lifetime, whether human or universal, but in an eternal now. Amazing achievement . . .

To help with this conundrum, be on the lookout for this book in audio.

Also, Jef Crab is going to provide some Reader Notes. And maybe assist in a stronger fashion through recorded Skype sessions we are doing together. I couldn’t be more blessed.

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Follow it! 

Gonzo Flyers created by that inimicable artist

GRANT GOODWINE.

If you feel inclined to buy a T-shirt to help us bring the best contributers in the world to New Orleans, go here.

To browse the official website, go here. World-famous composer/musician David Amram is playing with four New Orleans musicians. Panels you won’t want to miss are booked. Old friends will be hanging out.  No Tickets needed, though if you like, there will be a donations option at the door. More here.

THANK YOU. See you there.

Also, in the news . . .

The Hell’s Angels Letters – Hunter S. thompson

This book in hands – IT IS MIND BLOWING JAW DROPPING!!!

I just can’t leave it alone!

I approach it, open it, flip through it, can hardly decide what to read first, enjoy some pages, close it, do something else, and walk back to it, open it…… – for hours now!

Feel like taking two weeks off to just stay IN IT!

All these letters from Hunter asking you to save the situation, etc. ADORABLE!!!!

Wow! Thank you. Remember, it’s 1/4 written by Hunter (his new writing presented in color scans, full size).

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Bisagra’s Diné designers, stylists and Indigenous labor force have created a clothing line that is authentically by Native American designers, adding a beautiful fashion twist.

For a gorgeous T-shirt, check out Home | Bisagra Clothing Collection (thebisagracollection.com). Enjoy browsing through their collection based in Native American, Diné, art, some with “spirit animals” as the inspiration.

The latest addition is designs by Gonzo artist Grant Goodwine. Click here to feast your eyes on one.

Also shop the Peter Ray James collection. Peter Ray James is an honors graduate of the Institute of Native American American Indian Arts of Santa Fe.

Also, click here for the exclusive Red Shark T-shirt

See the gorgeous

Kinyaa’áanii Scarf here.

and the

Spirit Horse – Teal T-shirt here

From the Mission Statement page: “Mission
Bisagra, the Spanish word for ‘hinge,’ grew out of a vision to open a door for Diné artists and provide a pathway for them to showcase their work in larger, mainstream fashion markets.  Bisagra’s founder, Judy Campbell Clancy, began working with Mabel Canuto – a talented Diné seamstress—-in 1978 to sew a fashion line of cowboy shirts. It was troubling to Campbell Clancy how a people so talented and richly steeped in weaving heritage could experience one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Her work with Canuto became an effort to combat systematic racism and poverty by creating job opportunities within the Dine communities for weavers and other artists.”

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Photo by Bill Hardesty

FEATURING:

“The Hell’s Angels Letters & The Origins of Gonzo” Panel with Margaret Ann Harrell | Louisville, KY | North Carolina Writers’ Network (ncwriters.org)

Event Artwork: Grant Goodwine

Matt Hahn and Margaret Harrell, Gonzofest ’23

William McKeen and Ron Whitehead, GF ’23

The Hell’s Angels Letters panel, Gonzofest

The Hell’s Angels LETTERS Esteemed Panel, Gonzofest ’23

Tim Denevi (Freak Kingdom) and Margaret Harrell (Hell’s Angels Letters)

Dr. John Brick, GonzoFest panel,, and Danielle

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Harrell’s bold and searching collection takes readers on an odyssey of inquiry, with the first and foremost question being ‘How to establish that / Yes, I am / One with God and God is / One with You.’ But rather than provide an answer, Harrell’s poems seek to use the question as a gateway into a thought-space where the act of seeking knowledge results in spiritual transcendence. In a note, Harrell describes her spirituality as a conscious, living thing shaped over time by a series of spiritual events she calls ‘initiations,’ and through her poetry, Harrell seeks to divulge her spiritual wisdom.

The principle spiritual tenet in Particle Piñata is that all knowledge of the universe is united in an ever-shifting entity to which all people contribute and borrow, including the poet’s literary inspirations Baudelaire, Emerson, Whitman, and Joyce, and major figures from the poet’s own life, which include Milton Klonsky and Hunter Thompson. . . .

Touching on religion, philosophy, particle physics, linguistics, and more heady concepts, Harrell’s collection is a cosmic, often esoteric whirlwind which seeks to bring the poet’s conception of a spiritual being to life.
Takeaway: A cosmic, sophisticated collection that touches on spirituality, philosophy, and physics.

Great for fans of: Milton Klonsky, Delmore Schwartz.

From the Publisher:

The Particle Piñata collection spans over forty years of Life tackled from the heart. The genesis emerged when, living in Morocco in 1980, Margaret Ann Harrell began recording her dreams. And they poured in, introducing her to image trails.” She was in deep contact with the unconscious. In it resided this poet, a “second-class citizen” of herself. The poet to whom words came easily because after all she was in the unconscious, whereas the conscious prose author struggled, edited, cut, sweated, and was published. No longer is the poet in the closet. Having been a spokesperson for “the unconscious,” or collective unconscious, before, in this poetry Harrell brings in the transpersonal nature of us all. From after-death communications to stimulating RUMI-nations to metaphysics in “a bottle,” her poems bring puzzles, thought-provoking, with depth. Many are “To the Earth,” announcing prophetically, in the 1980s, the upheaval we are seeing today. True to the brand of humor of the unconscious, there is a section of brilliant word play, narrating insights about the untold stories of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, theChrist spirit, and the universal Christ consciousness.

From—Ron Whitehead, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate

The time of the grandmothers, of the nurturing healing feminine energy has arrived. Patriarchy has sewn destruction long enough. We must all, female and male, become healers, seers. In her epic PARTICLE PINATA, author Margaret Ann Harrell stands in direct lineage with the desert mystics, the poet prophets of old and, simultaneously, with the contemporary cutting edge avant-garde. In a whirling dance with the creative forces of the universe Harrell draws explicit and implicit lines to Rumi, Blake, Yeats, Joyce, Jung, and others while forging mystical connections with clouds and coastlines, dancing in the borderlands of space and time, of being and not being, of embracing and letting go. And she accomplishes it all in her own distinctly original poetic voice. Through decades of carrying these poems from continent to continent, Margaret Ann Harrell has continued to add new poems and photos, to edit and revise, to transform her self into an ever evolving being, into this masterpiece book. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Go ahead, open the front cover and enter. You’ll never be the same.

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Nicole Flemming – My Escape – Afghanistan

Available on Amazon, this incredible book takes you inside what it’s like to be a female child in the primitive-thinking, rural areas of this country, where a female has few rights. And what awaits the females there as Western troops leave, with most of us not really aware what that means. Read Nicole’s uplifting account. She knows it firsthand. Horrifically but inspiringly, she opts to come out on the positive side. I had the honor to edit it, so I know every word, every shock, every choice to be happy regardless, is accurate.

A brutal, frank, and extraordinary account
of true-life stories by Nicole Flemming.

Nicole was born into an Afghan/Irish family in London. Frequently, when people tell stories about their childhood, they remember happy memories playing in the park, their birthday parties, and even adventures with friends.

Yet, such a reality is not part of everyone’s life . . .

This book takes you into the life of a British Afghan female where the male holds all the authority. She experienced abuse from the person who was supposed to look after her. Trapped, afraid, and alone, young Nicole shows us what life was like for her. She also takes us on a life journey of her ancestors, both Afghani and Irish.
Nicole was uplifted by divine intervention from the spirit world; they held her hand and showed her the way, which only deepened her spiritual gifts and enhanced her ability to help others. She reveals many little-known backroads of life that are kept well hidden and unseen, which are not mentioned on this back cover. She will be highlighting some important subjects.
It is not your everyday read. Let’s put it that way.

This book will move you, leaving you gasping with astonishment at just what goes on behind closed doors.

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Limited Edition of 125 The Hell’s Angels Letters: Hunter S. Thomson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic

The month of July in the Canessa Gallery, San Francisco

MAIN EVENTS—Pacific Coast Time:

Friday evening, July 16—7 p.m. A 20-minute Zoom talk by Tim Denevi discussing Hunter’s development and growth as a writer during the time he wrote the Hell’s Angels article and the book. Followed by 15–30 minutes of Live Q & A from Margaret Harrell and Ron Whitehead.

Saturday afternoon, July 17—2:30. A Live performance in Canessa Gallery. Journalist David Streitfeld will interview Margaret A. Harrell, author of The Hell’s Angels Letters, for roughly a couple of hours, including Q & A and then book signing. A spontaneous interview by a master interviewer who interviewed Hunter multiple times—no prepackaged answers. Everything improvised and spontaneous.

Saturday evening—7 to 8 p.m.: “Live Gonzo Art with Illustrator Grant Goodwine”

Saturday evening—8 p.m. )Live): “The State of Gonzo Address 2021: Hunter S. Thompson Crazy Wisdom Visionary.” A 20-minute talk by Ron Whitehead, followed by a 20-minute talk by John Brick, PhD candidate,  on his research for his Marquette dissertation, Gonzo Eternal, ending with a 15-30-min. Q & A.

Sunday, July 18: 2 p.m.

Topic: a panel consisting of William McKeen and Dr. Rory Patrick Fehan (on Zoom) and (in the Canessa Gallery Live) David Streitfeld and Peter Richardson will discuss “Hell’s Angels as a bridge to Hunter becoming the Gonzo figure in Fear and Loathing.” This is the fiftieth anniversary year of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971).

Moderators: Margaret A. Harrell and Ron Whitehead.

Short Bios:

Grant Goodwine is a Louisville-Based Illustrator who has long been affiliated with the GONZO movement, including helping illustrate The Hell’s Angels Letters and annual posters for Gonzofest and even for Churchill Downs to help celebrate Hunter’s “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved.” Grant puts in his effort to help conserve Hunter’s Legacy along with hopes of keeping Gonzo going.

Margaret A. Harrell is a three-time MacDowell Colony fellow, who was Hunter’s copy editor and Jim Silberman’s assistant editor on Hell’s Angels at Random House, as well as working on many successful books there. With degrees from Duke University and Columbia University, she studied three years at the C. G. Jung Institute Zurich. She has lived in the U.S., Morocco, Switzerland, and Belgium and has fourteen published books, including the Keep This Quiet! memoir series and The Hell’s Angels Letters. Multifaceted, she is an author, editor, advanced meditation (light body) teacher and experimental cloud photographer.

Ron Whitehead, poet, writer, editor, publisher, professor, scholar, activist, is the author of 24 books and 34 albums. Ron has produced thousands of events and festivals, including 24 & 48 & 72 & 90 hour non-stop music & poetry Insomniacthons, in Europe and the USA. He has presented thousands of readings, talks, and performances around the world. He has edited and published hundreds of titles. The recipient of many awards, his work has been translated into 20 languages. In 2018 Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer presented Ron with a Lifetime Achievement for Work in The Arts Award. In 2019 Ron was named Kentucky’s Beat Poet Laureate and was also the first U.S. citizen to be named UNESCO’s Tartu City of Literature Writer-in-Residence.. He is co-founder and Chief of Poetics for Gonzofest Louisville. Outlaw Poet: The Legend of Ron Whitehead documentary will be released by Storm Generation Films/Dark Star TV in 2021.

David Streitfeld is the editor of Hunter S. Thompson: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (Melville House, 2018). The Last Interview series, which he edits, includes such authors as Gabriel García Márquez, Philip K. Dick and J. D. Salinger. He is a reporter for the New York Times, where in 2013 he was part of the team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. He has won various other prizes for his journal­ism. In the past he worked for the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.

William McKeen is a professor and the Chairman 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 courses on 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.

Rory Patrick Feehan, PhD, is a Hunter S. Thompson Schol­ar and the founder of Totallygonzo.org. He graduated with a doctorate in English Language & Literature from the Uni­versity of Limerick in 2018. He has spoken at the Louisville Gonzofest and at the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, on the opening night of their exhibit Gonzo: The Illustrated Guide to Hunter S. Thompson. A regular contributor to Beatdom, he has also recently contributed a piece on Thompson to the ency­clopedia American Political Humor: Masters of Satire and Their Impact on U.S. Policy and Culture.

Tim Denevi is the author of Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson’s Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism (PublicAffairs, 2018) and Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD (Simon & Schuster, 2014). His essays on politics, sport, and religion have recently appeared in The Paris Review, New York Magazine, Salon, The Normal School, and Literary Hub. He received his MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa, and he’s been awarded fellowships by the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Tim is an assistant professor at George Mason University and lives near Washington, DC.

John F. Brick is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He specializes in American literary journalism of the 1960s and ’70s with a particular focus on Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo journalism, and among his long-term career goals is to see the burgeoning niche of Thompson studies coalesce around centralized, comprehensive archives.  To that end, his work involves locating and cataloging—occasionally from unusual places—material by and about Thompson heretofore unknown to literary scholarship.  Alongside his dissertation, Gonzo Eternal, Brick is also presently compiling a thorough annotated variorum of Thompson’s seminal Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (but don’t tell his dissertation director about that).

Playing on the Big Canessa Screen – during the month of July

 1. Wonderland Book Club panel on The Hell’s Angels Letters

Alice Osborn, moderator https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVJbHG03dOg

2. Margaret A. Harrell – filmed live by film maker Nick Storm, Gonzo Fest 2014, Carmichael’s Bookstore, Louisville KY. DVD (Mailed Fed Ex)

3. Rory Feehan’s 25-minute video of his extensive HST collection, with him narrating
4. A 9-min. video by Tim Ferris, awarded science writer and also former Rolling Stone science writer at the time of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter’s friend. Exquisite remembrance.

5. Video of the events themselves as they are finished

ARTIFACTS for the Walls

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Thank you so much for your work and guidance.

Immerse yourself in ancient magical Atlantis.

The Black Pyramid, an interstellar ship, is also a temple, capable of travel across far distances and all dimensions, holding a mystery. Traveling deeper into the depths of the dark temple, an alchemist is setting up an experiment involving a micro-creature. He asks, “Will my name be the one written in the hearts of Atlanteans?” With nano-crystals circulating inside his bloodstream “an army of powerful dark beings,” he sets into motion a plan to redesign, redirect, the fate of the human race. Obviously, starting like this, the book is highly charged and imaginative. Qali the Alchemist is a product of genetic mutation (Project Alpha)—with a beam of transcendental technology fired into his DNA. But he is just one of the unforgettable characters, which include Halo-Sun the magician and Mirabella, a high priestess, in a love story. The warlike Devon Prime Selected, half dead, half alive, uses alien technology to preserve his condition. In the Capitol of Atlantis, collective consciousness uses the applied science of crystal computing and nanotechnology—for which reason the renegade group, the Black Pyramid, had the means to break away and take root. The twenty destroyers of the Queen are in heavy battle to defeat that renegade mythical ship. “We have entered the last era of Atlanti. . . . Keys for the future are in our hands, and we must focus all our abilities collectively into a positive outcome,” Halo reveals to Mirabella in ominous anguish.

Available at Amazon.com.

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