Ricardo Zegri
Official Site of the Writer, Musician & Local Weirdo
Bio
Ricardo Zegri is a writer and musician from the San Francisco Bay Area with a deep affection for pretentious beer and humble burritos. He is the recipient of the 2025 Cecelia Joyce Johnson Award for Short Story from the Key West Literary Seminar.
His prose and poetry have appeared in the Welter Literary Journal, Paragon Press, The Esthetic Apostle, The Gyroscope Review, Rum Punch Press and various other coffee stained zines. He has also written music reviews and editorials for Mind Equals Blown.
In 2023 his memoir piece The Wolfman was published as a limited edition handmade chapbook by Ethel Zine & Micro-Press.
He is currently at work on a full length memoir, a book of poems, and a novel.
In addition to writing, Ricardo has been working musician in the SF Bay Area for almost 30 years, founding several underground bands in the late 90s and early 2000s including: Satyrica, American Bindi, Plasterkatz and Crumpled Napkin.
He currently plays in three established Bay Area groups: 5 Cent Coffee (Neo-skiffle Junkyard Blues), High Card Drifters (Gomerpunk) and during the global shutdown he created a solo project called Modus Opera & Eye (Agnostic Gospel) releasing three concept EPs since the fall of 2020.
Ricardo wrote his first song when he was 11 years old and has compulsively written music ever since. Whether inspired by the lost San Francisco of his youth, true love (and the opposite), or classic literature (with and without pulp); Ricardo tries to set traps for the muse wherever he can find a pen and a musical instrument.
He currently lives in Vallejo California with his brilliant wife, crazy kid, and a pile of animals.
Press & Reviews
The mystical metaphor of "Wolfman" resonates throughout the story, which lays the foundation to unify the family’s unsettling tale. The vivid and concise prose portrays their seemingly idyllic life. The characters' situations in their lives were complex but the author was able to create a satisfying and rewarding denouement, which transforms their ordinary experience of their everyday lives into art."
‘Agnostic gospel and soulful nihilism for the people.’ This is one of many fantastically apt descriptions that has been anointed upon Ricardo Zegri’s sensational MODUS OPERA AND EYE project. Taking influence from such noir storytelling mavericks as Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen, this California based tunesmith creates a unique
musical universe that explores mysterious and spookily haunting themes.
Bay Area stage veteran Modus Opera & Eye (a.k.a. Ricardo Zegri) will bring his “Agnostic Gospel & Soulful Nihilism” to Santa Rosa. A multi-instrumentalist in many projects over the years, his current solo project was born out of the global shutdown of 2020. Since the creative isolation of the pandemic, he has produced a trio of concept EPs and is currently busy working on a fourth.
