The Virginia Center for Literary Arts Author Series at Handley Regional Library continues with Tim Denevi, who will read from his latest book Freak Kingdom: Hunter S. Thompson's Manic Ten-Year Crusade Against American Fascism. Tim received his MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa, and is also the author of Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD (2014). An assistant professor at George Mason University, Tim lives with his family near Washington, DC.

VCLA’s Founding Director Sean Murphy and the author will discuss the process of writing this book, the contemporary literary scene, followed by an open Q&A.

Copies of Tim’s book will be available for sale and signing. This is a free event!

More about the Book

Hunter S. Thompson is often misremembered as a wise-cracking, drug-addled cartoon character. This book reclaims him for what he truly was: a fearless opponent of corruption and fascism, one who sacrificed his future well-being to fight against it, rewriting the rules of journalism and political satire in the process. This skillfully told and dramatic story shows how Thompson saw through Richard Nixon's treacherous populism and embarked on a life-defining campaign to stop it. In his fevered effort to expose institutional injustice, Thompson pushed himself far beyond his natural limits, sustained by drugs, mania, and little else. For ten years, he cast aside his old ambitions, troubled his family, and likely hastened his own decline, along the way producing some of the best political writing in our history.

About the Author

Tim received his MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa, and is also the author of Hyper: A Personal History of ADHD (2014). His essays can be found online in The Atlantic, New York, Salon, Time, The Paris Review, and Literary Hub, where he writes about politics. He lives near Washington, DC, with his wife and children, and teaches in the MFA program at George Mason University.