Muldoon's Picnic (October 2019)

The author of three books of poetry, a book of literary criticism, a non-fiction book on tennis, and a book-length translation of fiction, Rowan Ricardo Phillips has been awarded the Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sportswriting, the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, a Whiting Award, and the GLCA New Writers Award. He has also been a finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize, the National Book Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Currently, he is writing the screenplay for Legendary’s biopic on baseball icon Roberto Clemente, which will be directed by O. J.: Made in America creator Ezra Edelman. Rowan Ricardo Phillips is a graduate of Swarthmore College, has a doctorate in English literature from Brown University, teaches English literature and creative writing at Stony Brook University and Princeton University, and lives in New York City and Barcelona with his wife and two daughters.

Photo credit: Sue Kwon

Emerald Rae is a fiddler and folksinger from the seaside town of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Roots Music Report hails her as “a spell-caster of no small skill…maxing out her axe’s potential in the service of her consistently compelling melodies,” and recognizes her self-titled 2018 release as “one of the year’s more fetching releases.” She was chosen as a Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Emerging Artist in 2018, and has established her personal style with ornamented vocals paired with groovy, percussive fiddle.

Photo credit: Anna Colliton

Beowulf Sheehan is a photographer of figures and performance in the arts, entertainment, and the humanities. In addition to his work with figures from stage and screen, through 2018 he has photographed more than eight hundred biographers, journalists, novelists, poets, and playwrights from more than fifty countries. That work has been published internationally in the likes of Elle, Esquire, The New Yorker, Newsweek, Time, Vanity Fair, and Vogue and exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York, Dostoevsky Museum, International Center of Photography, and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. The Portraits of Beowulf Sheehan, published October 9, 2018 by Black Dog & Leventhal, is his first book.

Starting at age seven, Cillian Vallely learned the whistle and uilleann pipes from his parents Brian and Eithne at the Armagh Pipers Club, a group that for over five decades has fostered the revival of traditional music in the north of Ireland. Since 1999, he has been a member of Lúnasa, one of the most acclaimed and influential bands in the recent history of Irish music. With Lúnasa, he has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, Glastonbury Festival, Womad Aledaide, the Edmonton Folk Festival, and many other venues on multiple tours of Asia, Australia, the U.S., and Europe. In recent years, he has played and recorded with Bruce Springsteen, Natalie Merchant, Mary Chapin-Carpenter, Tim O’Brien, and Riverdance, in addition to recording as a guest on over 70 albums. His solo album The Raven’s Rock was released to critical acclaim in 2016.

Rogue Oliphant is: Sim Cain (drums), Chris Harford (guitar), David Mansfield (guitar), Cáit O'Riordan (bass), Warren Zanes (guitar)