Muldoon's Picnic (September 2023)

Paul Muldoon was born in County Armagh in 1951 and now lives in New York. A former radio and television producer for the BBC in Belfast, he has taught at Princeton University for more than thirty years. He is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, including Moy Sand and Gravel (2002)—for which he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize—and Frolic and Detour (2019), as well as Selected Poems 1968-2014 (2016). Roger Rosenblatt, writing recently in the New York Times Book Review, described Paul Muldoon as “one of the great poets of the past hundred years, who can be everything in his poems—word-playful, lyrical, hilarious, melancholy. And angry. Only Yeats before him could write with such measured fury.” 

Photo credit: Gary Doak

The Kennedys are vocalists/guitarists Pete and Maura Kennedy. A husband and wife duo, they set out on the road together in the early 90s as members of Nanci Griffith's Blue Moon Orchestra, and since striking out on their own, they have traveled the US, Canada and Europe for three decades as a two-person band. Higher-energy than a folk act, but not as loud as a rock band, they mix passionate songwriting with a flair for entertainment and a repertoire of classic songs. Think of a song by Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, or the Beatles, and that smile on your face is the same smile you’ll be wearing when The Kennedys hit the stage.

Lucy Caldwell, born in Belfast, is a writer of novels, plays, radio dramas and short stories. Her most recent novel, These Days (2022) won the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. She has published two collections of stories—Multitudes (2016) and Intimacies (2021)—with a new collection, Openings, forthcoming in 2024. She is also the editor of Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (2019). Awards include the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the George Devine Award, the Imison Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, the BBC National Short Story Award, a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Alex Edelman’s first show, MILLENNIAL—about very traumatic stock photos and young people—won the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Newcomer, the first show by an American to do so since 1997. The follow-up, EVERYTHING HANDED TO YOU—about identity and the availability of outlets in airports —was even more acclaimed: selling out its entire Edinburgh run and garnering the second best reviews of any comedy show at the festival. His third show, JUST FOR US—which centers on a meeting of neo-Nazis that Edelman attended in New York—has cemented his reputation as a writer-performer of impressive ambition and technical skill. In its premiere run at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, it was nominated for a Barry Award for Best Show. In Edinburgh, it earned a Herald Angel Award, a nomination for Best Show, and superlative praise that made it the best reviewed comedy show at the Festival in a decade. Besides Edinburgh and Melbourne, JUST FOR US has had several extended runs in London’s West End at the Soho Theatre, the prestigious comedy haunt where many of Edelman’s solo efforts have premiered. The show has also been presented at Just For Laughs in Montreal, at the Bell House for New York Comedy Festival, Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theater, and on a three-month, COVID-truncated UK tour.

Singer-songwriter, record producer, independent label owner, and painter Chris Harford makes Hopewell, New Jersey his home. A founding member of Rogue Oliphant, Harford has been collaborating with Paul Muldoon for over a decade now.

Ray Kubian, a long-time collaborator with legendary poet Paul Muldoon, has lent his drumming, vocal, and songwriting talents to bands led by Richard Lloyd (Television), indie rock phenom Chris Forsyth, the Irish classic rock band Horslips, and Detroit-based band Electric Six, among others. He is co-founder of Moon Clouds Music, a teaching and production studio in the greater New York area.

David is an award-winning film and television composer. His first film score was for the controversial epic Heaven's Gate. It led to a four-film collaboration with director Michael Cimino, and a Golden Globe nomination for Year Of The Dragon. Other long-standing relationships include Mexican auteur Arturo Ripstein and Maggie Greenwald (Ballad of Little Jo, Songcatcher). His score for Ripstein's Deep Crimson won Best Musical Score at both the Venice and Havana Film Festivals. David’s score for the A&E mini-series Broken Trail (directed by Walter Hill) was nominated for an Emmy. His most recent score is for the Showtime limited series George & Tammy, starring Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain.

David also has composed for scripted podcasts, including Audible’s The Big Lie, starring Jon Hamm and created by John Mankiewicz. 

David is a world-renowned musician, coming to national attention at age 19 as part of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue. He subsequently formed The Alpha Band with fellow Dylan alumni T Bone Burnett and Steven Soles. He was featured in the Martin Scorsese film Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, and was a part of Dylan’s 1978 world tour which resulted in two albums, Live At Budokan and Street Legal. 

In the 1980s David was one of the founding members of Bruce Hornsby and The Range, receiving an RIAA platinum album and a Grammy for The Way It Is. His credits read like a veritable who’s who of popular music, from the late Johnny Cash to Sting to Bobby McFerrin. 

David is also a record producer. Current projects include albums by Teddy Thompson, Jenni Muldaur, and Laura Cantrell. He is currently producing a new album by Kinky Friedman.

Musician, writer, and broadcaster Cáit O’Riordan was a founding member of London-Irish punk band The Pogues, going on to play and sing on albums including the classic Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash (one of Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time). As well as her musical work, in 2013 Cáit graduated from University College Dublin with a master’s degree in psychological science. In 2016 Cáit was designated an “Individual with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement” by the United States Government and awarded the prestigious O-1 work visa, and she has been a regular performer at the Irish Arts Centre in New York City since. In 2020 the Irish band U2 picked Cáit to be the on-air voice of their new SiriusXM channel U2 X-Radio, for which she also hosts the weekly ‘Rocky O’Riordan Show.’ In 2023 she joined the legendary New York band Bush Tetras as their new bass player and will tour with the band in North America and Europe in Fall 2023. Cáit was also selected as the 2023 Women Of Irish Arts Honoree by the Irish Arts Centre.

Warren Zanes is a New York Times bestselling author, a Grammy-nominated documentary producer, and a professor currently teaching at New York University. As a teenager, Warren Zanes joined The Del Fuegos, making three records for Slash/Warner Bros. Later, after earning his PhD in visual and cultural studies from The University of Rochester, Zanes released Memory Girls, the first of four solo recordings made for Dualtone/Nashville. In the non-profit sector, Warren was the vice president of education and public programs at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and, for ten years, an executive director of The Rock and Roll Forever Foundation. His books include Dusty in Memphis (the first volume in the celebrated 33 1/3 series); Petty: The Biography; Revolutions in Sound: Warner Bros. Records; and Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. With Garth Brooks, Zanes has worked on all six books in the artist’s anthology series. Among his work in film, Zanes was a consulting producer on the Oscar-winning Twenty Feet from Stardom, a producer on the Grammy-nominated PBS Soundbreaking series, conducted interviews for Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison: Living in the Material World, and served as writer for The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash. He is an active member of both poet Paul Muldoon’s Rogue Oliphant and a family that includes his sons, Lucian and Piero.