ABOUT Ed

Ricciuti has had a lifetime interest in combat sports and self-defense. He fought his first catch-as-catch-can wrestling match at a backroom smoker when he was age 15. He was a boxing champion and later a trainer at the University of Notre Dame. After that, he trained amateur and professional fighters and was a licensed second for professional boxing in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In addition to his training in Combat Hapkido, JKD and internal arts, he has studied shorin ryu karate and judo. During the 1980s, he fought in tournaments that allowed no-pads, full contact, with no weight classes and open to all styles.

In his other life, Ricciuti is an author of books for adults and children and a journalist with international reporting experience. He has reported on a wide range of topics and events, from Iran under Shah to urban riots here at home, from ivory poaching in Africa to the war zone in the former Yugoslavia. He is a regular contributor to Entomology Today, blog of the Entomological Society of America, and to the online newspaper, the Connecticut Examiner, for which he covers nature, science and the outdoors. He was also a curator for the New York Zoological Society, with offices at the Bronx Zoo. He appeared as The Animal Man on the Patchwork Family program for children, WCBS-TV, New York. He has aught and lectured to audiences from graduate school to elementary school levels.

Ricciuti is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and was a Sloan-Rockefeller Advanced Science Writing Fellow at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He served in the United States Army Reserve and United States Marine Corps Reserve.

He was a chief hunter education/firearms safety instructor for the Connecticut DEP.

He belongs to the Overseas Press Club of America, the National Association of Science Writers & Outdoor Writers Association of America.

He is available for private lessons and classes. His website is edwardricciuti.com.