Over this past year, we have transitioned away from our old self-hosted website and towards our Substack page, and so I have not posted much here in spite of major updates. It occurred to me that perhaps it was worth posting a short note for the sake of those who have this website bookmarked.
On October 7, we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the 6 Gallery reading with the release of two publications. One was Beatdom #25, a special edition of our journal that looked at the San Francisco Renaissance, and the other was A Remarkable Collection of Angels: A History of the 6 Gallery Reading, which is the first book-length study of that key moment in literary history.
Next week, we will publish The Bunker Diaries, a book by Stewart Meyer. It explores his time with William S. Burroughs in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It is filled with much Burroughs wisdom and features appearances by the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, and Gregory Corso. There’s an excerpt here.
Yesterday, I wrote on Substack about our upcoming issues: Beatdom 26 and 27. The first of these will be an Allen Ginsberg special edition, released on his 100th birthday (June 3, 2026). The second will look at the topic of art. We are open to submissions for both issues. (General submissions information can be found here.)
Next year will also see the release of at least two Beatdom books: Marc Olmsted’s Beat Dharma and Thomas Antonic’s The Three Wives of Queer William S. Burroughs. The title of the latter relates to the extraordinary revelation, posted on this website several months ago, that Burroughs was married to a Mexican woman in 1949. He kept this secret his whole life and none of his biographers realised until Antonic made the shocking discovery.
On the subject of Burroughsian discoveries, Beatdom recently uncovered the origins of Burroughs’ interest in yagé. For many decades, people have speculated about it but now—finally—we know that he found out about this drug in a 1949 issue of Amazing Stories. You can read the essay for free here.
This was the latest in an investigative series posted on Substack. Others include:
- The origins of Kerouac’s famous phrase, “Whither goes thou, America?”
- An explanation of the word “Gonzo” (referring to Hunter Thompson’s style of writing)
- A look at what Allen Ginsberg problem read at the 6 Gallery reading
- An explanation of how one dream resulted in several of Ginsberg’s most important poems
I will continue to post on this website occasionally but if you want more regular updates and longer essays, consider signing up for our Substack.
