Muldoon's Picnic (February)

Nollaig Casey is an Irish fiddle player who has won several All-Ireland titles for fiddle and traditional singing. She started her career with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, and went on perform with Planxty, Moving Hearts, Liam O'Flynn, Frances Black, The Clancy Brothers, and Elvis Costello. She performs at Muldoon's Picnic with her husband, the guitarist Arty McGlynn.

Lisa Dwan is a performer, director, and writer. Having originally trained in the UK as a ballet dancer, she began acting professionally in her teens and has since worked extensively in theatre, film, and television, both internationally and in her native Ireland.

Recent work includes Harold Pinter’s The Lover and The Collection at STC in Washington D.C. and the world premiere of a one-woman production of her own adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s 1950s prose text No’s Knife at the Old Vic Theatre and Abbey Theatre (touring the US in 2018). Dwan has also performed in “The Beckett Trilogy” of Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby (Royal Court Theatre London, the Barbican Centre London, Southbank Centre London, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Paramount Theatre Boston, NYU Skirball, the Broad LA, Perth Festival, Paris, Hong Kong, Berlin, Toronto, Dublin, Belfast, Galway, and a sell-out UK tour), the title role of Anna Karenina  in the world premiere of the new adaptation by Marina Carr for the Abbey, Shining City (Irish Repertory Theatre), Text for Nothing (White Light Festival, Lincoln Center),  Beside the Sea (Southbank), Margot, Diary of an Unhappy Queen (Barbican), The Journey Between Us (Southwark Playhouse London), Ramin Gray’s production of Illusions by Ivan Viripaev (Bush Theatre London), Dear Bessie: Letters Live with Benedict Cumberbatch (Hay Festival and West End), The Soldiers Tale (Hay Festival),  The Importance of Being Earnest (Irish tour), The History of the World at 3am (Andrews Lane Dublin), and As You Like It (Galway Arts Festival). FILM: Trust by Danny Boyle, An Afterthought, Walt Disney’s Oliver Twist, The Tailor of Panama, and Bhopal—A Prayer for Rain. TELEVISION: Ovid (BBC), Not I (Sky Arts), Rock Rivals (ITV), Big Bow Wow, Fair City (RTÉ), and Mystic Knights (Fox).

Lisa is currently a fellow at the School of Art and Ballet at New York University and a 2017-2018 distinguished artist in residence at Columbia University where she is teaching at the Institute of Women and Gender studies and developing a new theatre piece with Colm Toibin based on Antigone.

From Dublin, Ivan Goff plays uilleann pipes and Irish concert flute and is currently a member of Irish traditional band Danú. Over the years he has performed internationally in duets and ensembles with many household names of Irish music including Iarla Ó Lionáird, Mícheál Ó Raghallaigh, Martin Hayes, Cormac Breatnach, Eileen Ivers Band, Dervish, and Lúnasa. Ivan has also appeared with the New York Philharmonic, and his music has featured in several well-known productions such as Riverdance and Sting's The Last Ship on Broadway. His collaborations with producers, composers, and choreographers include: dance (Jean Butler's Hurry), theater (Richard Maxwell's Samara), film soundtrack (Matthew Barney's Cremaster), new music (with The League of Composers/ISCM), and experimental improv (with Evan Parker). 

Ivan holds a PhD in music from New York University and masters degrees from Queens University, Belfast and University College Dublin.

Arty McGlynn is an Irish guitarist born in Omagh, County Tyrone. In addition to his solo work, he has collaborated with different notable groups such as Patrick Street, Planxty, Four Men and a Dog, De Dannan and the Van Morrison Band. He performs at Muldoon's Picnic with his wife, the fiddle player Nollaig Casey.

John Vanderslice is the author of The Last Days of Oscar Wilde (Burlesque Press). His previous book, Island Fog (Lavender Ink), a collection of ten stories and two novellas set on Nantucket Island, was named by Library Journal as one of the Top 15 Indie Fiction titles of 2014. A native of the Washington DC area, John has an MFA from George Mason University and a PhD from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette (ULL). After graduating from ULL in 1997, he began teaching at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), where he is a much loved professor of writing. His fiction has  been published in many leading journals, as well as several anthologies, including Chick for a Day and The Best of The First Line.