Sharon Spring’s Klinkhart Hall Arts Center will once again present Muldoon’s Picnic, Saturday, September 9, 7:30pm at the Sharon Springs Central School Auditorium.
Tickets are available at https://klinkharthall.org, product/muldoons-picnic/ or at the door, subject to availability.
Named after a popular New York vaudeville act and an Irish-American farce from the 1880s, Muldoon’s Picnic is an entertainment devised, developed, and hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon.
And, no, it’s not a picnic.
Billed as a mixum-gatherum of poetry, prose, and music, Muldoon’s Picnic has featured appearances by hundreds of artists.
In addition to the “house band” Rogue Oliphant, the Sharon Springs Picnic will feature renowned music Amy Rigby, novelist Susan Choi, and poet Mark Doty, along with Mr. Muldoon.
Rogue Oliphant is a collective of musicians that specializes in playing original songs and accompanying spoken word lyrics by Mr. Muldoon.
The band toured Ireland with “Muldoon’s Picnic” in 2017, 2019 and again in the summer of 2022, and previously appeared in Sharon Springs with Mr. Muldoon in 2019 and 2021 and with Muldoon’s Picnic in 2022.
In addition to Mr. Muldoon, the September 2023 lineup includes Chris Harford, Ray Kubian, David Mansfield, Cait O’Riordan, Warren Zanes, and guest Alexis Moon.
Amy Rigby has been writing, performing, and recording her songs of everyday life for over 30-years.
She continues to tour and release new music with husband and sometime duo partner Wreckless Eric. Her book, “Girl To City: A Memoir,” was published in 2019.
Susan Choi’s first novel won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction.
She was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize and 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, and the inaugural recipient of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award.
She is as a trustee of PEN America and teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
Mark Doty is a renowned author of nine books of poetry and four memoirs as well as a book about craft and criticism, “The Art of Description: World Into Word.” Mr. Doty is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University, and teaches in NYU’s low-residency MFA program in Paris.
Mr. Muldoon is an international award-winning poet, professor of poetry, as well as an editor, critic, and translator. He is also the founder of the Sharon Springs Poetry Festival.
Klinkhart Hall Arts Center, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization that seeks to preserve the historic Klinkhart Hall building in Sharon Springs and to establish it as an arts center for the regional and local communities.
More information is available at Klinkharthall.org.