LITERATURE & CONVERSATION

Muldoon’s Picnic $18 member / $20 non-member Free drink included with ticket

Muldoon’s Picnic with Special Guests Tracy K. Smith, Mark Mulcahy and Patrick McCabe Monday, December 8 | 7:30 pm An omnium-gatherum of words and music hosted by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and New Yorker poetry editor Paul Muldoon with music by the Wayside Shrines Featuring Special Guests Patrick McCabe Mark Mulcahy Tracy K. Smith Stephen Rea Irish film and stage actor, currently performing as Oedipus / Otto in A Particle of Dread, at Signature Theatre  Neil Martin Composer and Cellist for A Particle of Dread, currently at Signature Theatre “The most significant English-language poet born since the second World War.” - The Times Literary Supplement on Paul Muldoon “A life-saving album.” – The Princeton Magazine on Wayside Shrines album The Word on the Street (2013). A brand new series of words and music led by Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish poet and pop lyricist Paul Muldoon. Reading and performing with his Princeton-based music collective, the Wayside Shrines, Muldoon will be joined each night by different special literary and musical guests dropping in to various performances.

Patrick McCabe is an Irish writer. Known for his mostly dark and violent novels set in contemporary—often small-town—Ireland, McCabe has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto. Both have been turned into films.

Mark Mulcahy is an American musician and former front-man for the New Haven, Connecticut-based band Miracle Legion in the 1980s to mid-1990s. When the band disbanded, Mark soon formed Polaris; a house band for the mid-1990s alternative television series The Adventures of Pete & Pete (1993–1996). They are perhaps best remembered for the song "Hey Sandy" as it was featured in the opening credits of each show, and for nostalgic tunes such as, "Waiting for October" and "Saturnine". Following the cancellation of Pete & Pete, Mulcahy found himself playing his own shows in New York City and building up his solo career. Mulcahy has opened for many notable artists including Oasis and Jeff Buckley and received homage from Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, who dedicated a song to Mulcahy at a Boston show. Mark is still working on his solo career today via his own label Mezzotint.com.

Tracy K. Smith was born in Massachusetts and earned her BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. From 1997 to 1999 she held a Stegner fellowship at Stanford University. Smith is the author of three books of poetry: The Body's Question (2003), which won the Cave Canem prize for the best first book by an African-American poet; Duende (2007), winner of the James Laughlin Award and the Essense Literary Award; and Life on Mars (2011), which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Smith teaches creative writing at Princeton University and lives in Brooklyn.

Stephen Rea is an Irish Academy Award-nominated actor known for roles in films like The Crying Game, Interview With the Vampire and V for Vendetta. He is currently performing as Oedipus / Otto in A Particle of Dread at Signature Theatre.

Neil Martin is a composer, cellist and an uilleann piper from Belfast, Ireland. Neil has composed and directed music extensively for theatre, notably Stephen Rea’s award-winning production of Northern Star (1998) and Marie Jones’ Women on the Verge of HRT (West End 1995). He is currently the Composer and Cellist forA Particle of Dread at Signature Theatre.