Joseph P. Ritz is an award-winning journalist and a published author and playwright. In a long career he has worked for six daily newspapers and one radio station. He was a correspondent for the United Press and been a stringer for such newspapers as The New York Post , The New York Herald-Tribune, The Detroit Times, The National Catholic Reporter, The Chicago Tribune and The London (England) Express. He is the author of two books. The Despised Poor, (Beacon Press) received favorable reviews in the New York Times and several other newspapers and in national magazines, such as The Atlantic Monthly. I Never Looked for My Mother and Other Regrets of a Journalist is his latest book. The title comes from a journey made finding what he owes his unknown mother, said to be the sister of two priests, who gave him up. There is humor, madness and mischief in the book which also tells stories about newspaper reporters and editors he has known as well as such well known persons as Truman, Nixon and Martin Luther King.
Ritz wrote part of a series of articles entitled The Road to Integration, which won a Pulitzer Prize for the Gannett Group of newspapers. He has also won several national and state awards in his own right for his newspaper stories.
In recent years, he has returned to writing plays, a vice he first took up in college. He was one of four finalists in the prestigious Drama League of New York’s 1987-88 Plays in Progress Competition for Abbey of the Monongahela , a play set in a Trappist monastery focusing on the conflict between a feminist reporter wishing to find out the truth about a famous monk’s illicit romance and the abbot who wants to keep the story hidden. It was given its first full staging by the American Ensemble Theatre Company in Manhattan.
It also won an award from the University of Massachusetts’ Theater Department, where it was further developed and renamed Trappists. It was staged again in New York City in 1993 by the American Theatre for Actors and has been performed in several other cities. In 1994 it won a best play award from Christians in Theatre Arts. In 1997, the play was second in the Open Book Contest sponsored by the Stage and Screen Book Club and Doubleday . A new production opened in April, 2001 in New York City. It is published by Doubleday as part of an anthology entitled: INCISIONS, Award Winning Plays from the Stage and Screen Book Club.
The Harvest Years was one of the three winning plays in the Henrico Theatre contest in 1999 and premiered in Richmond, Va. in 2000.
Other plays have been performed in various cities, including Los Angeles.
In 2002 he was awarded a playwriting fellowship by the New York Foundation for the Arts.
In 2000 he was presented the Marquette University Byline Award. Articles syndicated by: The Associated Press, North American Newspaper Alliance, Gannett News Service.
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Name: Richard W Starn
Date: 2007-07-01
Email: rwstarn@starn.com
Comments: Jo Ritz: Rich here. An impressive read. So glad I met you this past Friday at the Smothers Brothers Concert. Im going to put a little ditty together. I hope it's worthy of your achievements. I love out of the mainstream stuff. I'll get back to you in the next few weeks. Best regards, Rich Starn
