The Ricapito Writer’s Group has been meeting since the late seventies and has included a number of distinguished members. For many decades, a small band of dedicated writers has gathered one Saturday morning a month in the home of Joe and Carolyn Ricapito in order to refine their craft. Last year one of their most beloved and talented founding members, Joe Ricapito, passed away. His wife Carolyn, herself an accomplished poet and fiction writer, is making plans to move to New York state so she can be near her daughter. Before our local gem can leave us, the group has decided to have a reading in Carolyn and Joe’s honor.
This event begins a little earlier than our normal 4:00, with The Ukelele Orchestra playing some rousing tunes beginning at about 3:15pm. Carolyn Ricapito will start things off with a very brief history of this long-standing and generative group.
Five members will read poetry. Four will present fiction. Carolyn will give the audience a short segment from her hilarious portrait of “Giorgio,” a visiting Italian professor that trips-the-light-fantastic at LSU during the free-loving 80's. John Tarlton will mete out a bit of his elegant prose from a forthcoming novel in which a troubled character tries to untie the knot of his father’s suicide while striking new chords and moving forward. Andrew King - whose voice alone makes the day - will deliver one of his intriguing contemporary renderings of an Aesop’s Fable. Jeanne George is going to read from a short story that will take you back to rural Mississippi in the 1950’s as she paints portraits so vivid that you can smell the surroundings in every scene. Richard Kilbourne will give us a handful of his well wrought poems. Ed Ruzicka plans to present two poems that he hopes stay with you well after the reading ends. Eileen Shieber will read a number of finely honed pieces she draws from her daily activities. Marilyn Shapley will show us her lyric gifts in a few of her sharply imagined, well crafted verses. Cynthia Toups will share her wit and finesse by reading a spate of her poems.
Readers include:
Click on the images above to learn more about each reader.