Muldoon's Picnic (September)

Kimiko Hahn is the author of nine collections of poetry, including Brain Fever and Toxic Flora. Both of these were prompted by fields of science in much the same way previous work was triggered by Asian American identity, women's issues, black lung disease, and personal grief. Honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN/Voelcker Award, Shelley Memorial Prize, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Hahn currently serves as president of the board, the Poetry Society of America, and is a distinguished professor in the MFA program in creative writing & literary translation at Queens College, the City University of New York. She lives in New York with her husband and their terrier Trudy. 

Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan

David Power is a member of Irish music groups Masters of Tradition and Pipers Union. He has performed in the off-Broadway show Love’s Pure Light, recorded music for the Irish Repertory Theatre’s The Field, and was a cast member and musician in the Broadway production of Eugene O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet. He has performed with many poets including Michael Davitt, Dermot Bolger, Kerry Hardie, Seamus Heaney, Thomas McCarthy, Clodagh Beresford-Dunne, and Robert Pinsky; worked with accordionist Tony MacMahon, Dermot Bolger, and director John Comisky on audiovisual show The Frost is All Over, and developed with Kerry Hardie and Olivia O’Leary a stage show based on early Irish Christian Saints, To Find a Heathen Place and Sound a Bell, which had its debut at the renowned Kilkenny Arts Festival. 

Recent collaborations include a Music Network commission entitled Edges of Light with harpist Maeve Gilchrist, fiddler Tola Custy and dancer Colin Dunne, which featured at Irish Arts Center in June 2017, and audiovisual show Antarctica with composer Linda Buckley and John Comisky, which premiered at the 2017 Kilkenny Arts Festival. With three critically acclaimed solo recordings—My Love is in America, Cuachín Ghleann Neifin, and The Eighteen Moloney—Power regularly performs with fiddle players Willie Kelly and Martin Hayes, presents organ and uilleann pipes recitals with Malcolm Proud, and performs with baroque group Camerata Kilkenny in a show called The Piper and the Faerie Queen.

“The unifying theme, as the title suggests, is dawn, Irish dawn in particular, and the music evokes both the hush and the brilliance of early morning” (New York Times)

“The opening wail of uilleann pipes, played by David Power, which shifts into swirling music of military glory, beautifully establishes the central opposition of inner pain and public fantasy” (New York Times)

“David Power brings a breathtaking freshness to the set, his fluid, fluent playing as light as a feather” (Irish Times)

Damsen is a singer and songwriter based in Brooklyn. Her work explores the connections between strength and vulnerability, melding indie rock with modern R&B. Her debut EP will be released later this year.

Harold Schechter’s essays on crime and media violence have appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the International Herald Tribune.  He has written for network television (Law & Order) and been featured as an expert on PBS’ History Detectives as well as various cable shows. 

Among his more than forty published books are a series of historical true-crime narratives about America’s most infamous serial killers, several encyclopedic works (including the bestselling, Serial Killers Files), and an anthology of American true crime writing published by the Library of America.  

His 2014 book, The Mad Sculptor, was a 2015 Edgar nominee in the Best Crime Fact category.  His most recent true crime book, Hell’s Princess, was published in April, 2018 and became a Washington Post and Amazon Charts bestseller. 

Photo Credit: Kimiko Hahn

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