The Weird Road to Gonzo: Hunter S. Thompson's Savage Journey
with author Peter Richardson and Matthew Félix

This event will be conducted via Zoom. Register and you will be emailed the Zoom credentials.

This event is produced in partnership with the San Francisco Writers' Conference.

Join biographer Peter Richardson for a discussion with Matthew Félix of his new biography about maverick journalist Hunter S. Thompson. The discussion will touch upon Hunter S. Thompson's San Francisco Bay Area experiences and his literary journey from disciple of the New Journalism of the 1960’s to father of his own form, “Gonzo Journalism”.  

Peter Richardson has written critically acclaimed books about Hunter S. Thompson, the Grateful Dead, Ramparts magazine, and radical author/editor Carey McWilliams. The New York Times and Mother Jones have excerpted his work, and his essays have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, Los Angeles Times Book Review, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, California, Guernica, California History, and many other outlets. A busy book reviewer, he received the National Entertainment Journalism Award for Online Criticism in 2013.

Since 2006, Richardson has taught courses on California culture at San Francisco State University. He has been interviewed on related topics for various documentary films, newspaper and magazine stories, podcasts, and public radio programs in North America and abroad. He also speaks frequently at universities, museums, book festivals, and historical societies. His professional experience includes editorial stints at the University of California Press, PoliPoint Press, the Public Policy Institute of California, and Harper & Row, Publishers.

In the 1990s, Richardson was an associate professor of English at the University of North Texas, a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Iceland, and an NEH Summer Seminar fellow at Harvard University. He also wrote a textbook on stylistic revision, now in its second edition. Before that, he earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. in economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Born and raised in the East Bay, he now lives in Sonoma County.

Matthew Félix is an author, podcaster, and speaker. On his Matthew Félix on Air and as host of the San Francisco Writers Conference podcast, he has interviewed NY Times bestselling authors, leaders of organizations such as LitQuake, the Mill Valley Film Festival, and the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, and notable figures in fields as diverse as travel, health, and the environment. Matthew also regularly speaks about subjects ranging from creativity to podcasting to marketing for authors. Publishers Weekly’s BookLife Prize called his debut novel, A Voice Beyond Reason, “(a) highly crafted gem,” and his latest book, Porcelain Travels, won Gold for Humor in the Readers’ Favorite Awards and was a Foreword INDIES Humor Book of the Year Award finalist.

Savage Journey: Hunter S. Thompson and the Weird Road to Gonzo is part of the Mechanics' Institute's Library collection or available for purchase locally at Alexander Book Company.

Please email Taryn Edwards if you have any questions - [email protected]