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Josh Ritter

WILKES-BARRE — The F.M. Kirby Center has announced a very special acoustic evening with one of the best songwriters currently touring — Josh Ritter, who will visit the venue’s Chandelier Lobby on May 28 at 7:30 p.m., with special guests Barnstar.

Tickets go on sale this Friday at 10 a.m. and can be purchased at the Kirby Center Box Office, by phone at (570) 826-1100 and online at www.kirbycenter.org. A special Kirby Members Pre-Sale will begin Wednesday at 10 a.m.

As always, Kirby Members buy first, so join today at (570) 823-4599, ext. 225. Tickets are $25 (in advance), $30 (day of show), plus fees.

Hailed by Entertainment Weekly as “one of the 10 most exciting artists” on the touring circuit right now, Ritter continues to hit the road in support of his break-through, 2013 release, “The Beast in its Tracks.”

Clearly his most personal record to date, Ritter admits the many emotions that came with putting the album together.

“In the year after my marriage ended, I realized that I had more new songs than I’d ever had at one time,” Ritter said. “Far from the grand, sweeping feel of the songs on (2010’s) ‘So Runs the World Away,’ these new songs felt like rocks in the shoe, hard little nuggets of whatever they were, be it spite, remorse, or happiness.”

In 2011, Ritter made is debut as a published author with his New York Times Best-selling novel, Bright’s Passage (Dial Press/Random House). Of the work, Stephen King writes in The New York Times Book Review, “Shines with a compressed lyricism that recalls Ray Bradbury in his prime…This is the work of a gifted novelist.”