Máirín Uí Chéide (singing) was born in Galway Ireland and grew up in Ceantar na nOileán in the Conamara Gealtacht. She is a native Gaelic speaker and has continued to do so in Boston where she has lived since 1986 with her husband Páraic and five children. She has immersed herself in the cultural and language movement since her arrival to the United States, traveling around the country teaching and performing the art of Seanós singing. She has recorded many of her songs and has a collection in Burns Library of Boston College. She has many awards from Oireachtas na Gaeilge including the coveted Corn Uí Riada.

Maldon Meehan (dancing) grew up dancing Irish sets with her father, when she discovered Irish sean-nós dance in her early 20s Maldon knew that it was a perfect fit. She loves to share this art form and teach all over America while still pursuing other forms of dance like Irish old-style dance, Cape Breton, Irish set, and Appalachian Clogging among others. Maldon has performed on the nationally televised 2005 Oireachtas at the Cork Opera House in Cork City (TG4) as well as on Connemara Community Radio and Raidió na Gaeltachta (RTÉ). Maldon placed 3rd in the 2005 Comórtas Chóilín Sheáin Dharach, a sean-nós jig competition held in Connemara. In 2005 Maldon and Ronan Regan released the first-ever instructional DVD of sean-nós dance. Today the DVD has been sold all over the world. She has performed on stage at venues such as Milwaukee Irish Festival (Wisconsin), the Boffin Arts Festival (Ireland), and Portland Christmas Revels. She currently lived in Oregon where she holds regular classes and workshops both online and in community spaces. 

Alicia Guinn (dancing) is a leading American expert on old-style Irish dance traditions, including sean-nós dancing, set dancing, old-style step dancing, céilí dancing, and two-hand dances. For more than 25 years, Alicia has worked throughout the U.S. and Canada, performing, teaching, and consulting for both local and national events. With expertise rooted directly in the sean-nós dance tradition of Co. Galway and the set dancing communities of Co. Clare, Alicia helps students develop joy, fluency, flow, musicality, and personal style in their dancing. Alicia’s teaching style is strongly influenced by her professional experience in early childhood education and play-based learning. Her teaching background inspires her to create new, innovative approaches for teaching traditional dance. Alicia creates welcoming, inclusive learning communities that empower students to develop courage and creativity. Alicia believes in using traditional dance to create community and generate life-affirming joy. She promotes the many mental and physical benefits of dance and believes that dance should be accessible to people of all ages, backgrounds, body types, skill levels, and socio-economic conditions.

Colin Kadis (music) is an accordion-player from Boston, MA. He first encountered traditional Irish culture through his grandfather, a poet, who grew up in Queens, NY in the 1930’s and imparted a reverence for older styles of Irish music, having heard Michael Coleman play live as a child and been born to parents from Ballydesmond, Co. Cork and Castleisland, Co. Kerry in the Sliabh Luachra musical tradition. Growing up in Boston, Colin had the opportunity to learn music, philosophy, and stories from local musicians like Tommy Sheridan and Sean McKiernan. Time spent in Ireland, Vermont, Chicago, Ithaca, and later Vancouver BC have created opportunities for further influences. His focus within Irish music lies on personal styles and their ability to impart a musician’s own personality. In particular he has spent considerable time researching and analyzing the music of Joe Cooley, Padraig O’Keefe, Molly Myers Murphy, and Nell Galvin. He is one of the organizers of the Northeast Tionól, an October piping event in the Catskills Mountains in New York, and Tunes on the Charles, an Irish music festival in Boston. Colin has competed and/or won medals in several Comhaltas competitions and was selected as a finalist in the Sean Ó Riada Bonn Óir competition in 2026.

Seán Clohessy (music) comes from the parish of Fedamore in Co. Limerick. He was raised in a musical family that included his brother, Cathal, and his sisters, Catherine and Maureen, and began playing the fiddle at a young age. Much of his early influence came from musicians in his native Limerick and neighboring Co. Clare. As an adult, he lived in and played music in London, where his music was heavily influenced by the Clare fiddler Brendan Mulkere. Since coming to the US, he has lived in New York but relocated to Boston in 2017. He is heavily involved in teaching, dedicating his time, talent, and energy to developing young musicians, and he brings special insight to his music, playing with particular sensitivity and feeling. Seán remains a vibrant member of the traditional Irish music scene in the Boston area and, alongside SNNW guest musician Colin, is a co-organizer for the Tunes on the Charles Irish Music Festival.

Denis Kautsman-Kofanov (Gaeilge) is a Middle East librarian at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has a degree in linguistics. He has been speaking, studying and teaching Irish for 15 years and has spent time in the Mayo Gaeltacht studying the local dialect. In addition to Irish, he is interested in the other Celtic languages, especially Welsh and Cornish, and is involved in the Seattle Scottish Gaelic scene.

Niall Ó Murchú (Gaeilge) is an Irish-speaker from Dublin and Cork. He has been based in Washington since 1993 and teaches at Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies. He brings students from Western Washington University to Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge in Gaoth Dobhair and at Ollscoil na Gaillimhe/University of Galway to study Irish (Gaeilge) and language policy. He is a student in Maynooth University’s Dianchúrsa i Scríobh na Gaeilge. Niall has been attending singing classes at Sean-Nós NW since 2010 and leads sean-nós classes and sings at the Bellingham Celtic Festival and the Bellingham Folk Festival.

Holly Griffith (culture) has been the Artistic Director of Corrib Theatre, the only Irish Theatre on America's West Coast, since 2022. She moved to Portland from Dublin, where she earned an MFA in Theatre Directing with distinction at the Lir Academy, Trinity College Dublin. Holly's theatrical values center the advantages of the live and in-person format, bold and unusual stories, and the intersections of Irish identity. Holly is originally from Dayton, Ohio, with an Irish American lineage ancestry reaching back to Chicago, Waterford, Cork, and Kerry.

Madrone (culture) co-owns Hedgerow Herb Co., a local herbal apothecary. She is a medicine maker, crafter, gardener, and farmer who began practicing herbalism in 2015. During this time she also began practicing old-time traditions of her Gaelic-speaking ancestors, honoring the wheel of the year. Madrone is passionate about the preservation of these traditions and the old ways of people around the globe, not as artifacts frozen in time but as acts of resistance to the modern tecnococratic ways depleting the Earth's precious resources. At her shop, Madrone empowers people to learn the language of plants and simple methods of medicine making through monthly classes at the shop and herbal consultations. When not tinkering in the back of the shop, she dwells in the woods working with her hands or tending her animals.

Erin Fahey (culture) is a craftsperson and educator whose focus is connecting with the living world through traditional craft practices. She has led courses in willow basketry for the past 13 years and has also enjoyed many years of teaching adult and kids programming centered on fire tending, native plants, botanical dyes, wool craft, and other traditional arts forms, all woven with seasonal rounds, land connection, song, and folklore. She explores ways of living in diaspora that celebrate the wisdom of her ancestral Irish and Eastern European roots, while humbly learning from the lands and peoples where she lives in the Pacific Northwest. Above all, Erin is an apprentice to the willows and the wild places where they grow, seeking to learn and share ways of living in reciprocity and creating a more just and beautiful world.

David Ingerson (singing) began to sing folk songs in his 30s. Not long after picking up a few Irish songs, he started visiting Ireland. 45 years later he's visited Ireland eighteen times, usually for a month or more at a time, has attended dozens of traditional music and singing festivals there, and hundreds of singing sessions.  He has attended singing workshops led by such Irish traditional singing luminaries as Paddy Tunney, Séamus Mac Mathúna, Lillis Ó Laoire, and Roisin White and has sung in sessions with Frank Harte, Tom Lenihan, Geordie Hanna, and others.

Genevieve Galarneau (culture) is a folklorist and tradition-bearer. She is an All-Canada champion Sean-nós singer, having won the Comórtas Amhránaíochta Sean-nós at the Oireachtas na Gaeilge Cheanada in 2021. Genevieve holds a Master’s degree in folklore and ethnomusicology focusing on Sean-nós singing and systems of belief in the pan-Gaelic worldview. She has performed with celebrated masters of Irish traditional music in Ireland and the US and has recently appeared singing on TG4 (Irish National Television) and Highland Radio. Genevieve is currently being funded by the Irish Arts Council under the guidance of Lillis Ó Laoire to reconstruct the ancient heroic lay tradition. She teaches online courses and workshops in song learning and various aspects of the song tradition. A native of Portland, Oregon, she has now made her home in County Donegal, as she continues her lifelong study of the Irish language, folklore, and song tradition.

Dubhán Ó Longáin, (culture) from Bealach Féich in County Donegal, is a contemporary Irish writer, poet, folklorist, and educator who earned his PhD from Ulster University, specializing in the poetry of the Fenian Cycle. In particular, his research explored the compilation of a seventeenth-century manuscript and the performance methods of a genre of poetry amongst the lay-community of Ireland over the past 300 years. He has two published works, including a collection of poetry, IDEO Locator (2020), and Bláth na dTulach (2022), a collection of short stories. Interested both in academia and in creative writing, his talent and skills has earned him prizes in both fields.

Hope Hutsell (children’s program) is an Irish, Scottish, and Welsh descended American parent and educator in Washington with a background in child development and a joy for all things Irish. Hope has attended the PNW Sean-nos Festival for three years and integrates Irish language, song, and step-dancing into her children’s homeschool routine. Steeped in knowledge shared through seven years with Tribal cohorts at the Evergreen State College, she brings respectful awareness to sovereign nations and a relationship-based approach to curriculum.

Greta Hazilla-Dean - níos mó eolais ar ball.