The tame version of the annual Gasparilla celebration kicks off Saturday with the alcohol-free Gasparilla Children's Parade and Piratechnic Extravaganza.
Activities in the afternoon include a bicycle and skating safety clinic (noon), a miniparade for little pirates (2 p.m.), an air invasion with vintage planes and the U.S. Special Operations Command Parachute Team (3 p.m.) and the children's parade (4:30-6:30 p.m.), all along Tampa's Bayshore Boulevard, between Rome and Bay to Bay.
The "Piratechnic" fireworks extravaganza at 7 finishes the evening. Bayshore Boulevard between Rome and Bay to Bay will be wired to broadcast the fireworks soundtrack; others can listen to the music that goes with the pyrotechnics on WMTX-FM 100.7. All activities are free. 813 353-8108; www.gasparillaextravaganza.com
Adventures in literature
Aspiring writers and lovers of literature can hear from a range writers, including a Pulitzer Prize winning poet and the author of Mystic River, over the next 10 days during free readings and talks at St. Petersburg's Eckerd College.
The series begins at 7:30 p.m. Saturday with A. Manette Ansay (Vinegar Hill, an Oprah Book Club Selection, and Midnight Champagne, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, fiction) and Sterling Watson (director of Eckerd College's creative writing program and author of five novels).
It continues at 7:30 p.m. daily with Stephen Dunn (who won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Different Hours) and Michael Steinberg (founding editor of the literary journal Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction) Sunday; Peter Meinke (noted poet and fiction writer) and Les Standiford (South Florida mystery writer and author of Last Train To Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad That Crossed an Ocean) Monday; Jack Driscoll (editor and the author of four books of poems, a collection of short stories and three novels) and B. Lee Hope (a fiction writer) Tuesday; poet Dzinia Orlowsky (founding editor of Four Way Books and a contributing editor to AGNI and The Marlboro Review) and Roland Merullo (author of Leaving Losapas, A Russian Requiem and Revere Beach Boulevard) Jan. 27; and poet Terrance Hayes (author of Hip Logic and Muscular Music poetry) and poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar (The Hour Between Dog and Wolf and Of Small Gods of Grief) Jan. 28.
The series concludes at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 29 with Eckerd College alumni Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River.
The readings Saturday through Tuesday are in the college's Miller Auditorium; the sessions Jan. 27-Jan. 29 are in Fox Hall. Eckerd College is at 4200 54th Ave. S, St. Petersburg. Details at http://writersinparadise.eckerd.edu 727 864-7994.
