Who we are

Board President Seán Williams has been studying the Irish language and sean-nós singing since the 1970s. In addition to being the President of ICSPNW, she teaches singing workshops at our festivals.  Sean worked closely with the great sean-nós singer Joe Heaney in the final years of his life, and has recently co-written with Lillis Ó Laoire a critical and award-winning biography of Heaney’s life and works (Bright Star of the West: Joe Heaney, Irish Song-Man from Oxford University Press). A previous book, Focus: Traditional Irish Music (Routledge 2010) is currently in use in a number of universities in Ireland and North America. And her The Ethnomusicologists' Cookbook: Complete Meals from Around the World was named one of the New York Times’ Top 20 Cookbooks of 2006.  Her current book projects include The Performance of Liminality: Sacred, Alluring, and Dangerous (a monograph); Musics of the World (a textbook); When Musicians Speak: Interviews in Ethnomusicology (an edited volume with Julia Byl); and Blood Harmony (a murder mystery).  She is a professor of Irish Studies and ethnomusicology at The Evergreen State College and has a Facebook alter-ego named Captain Grammar Pants.

Festival Director Kimberly Goetz is an award-winning public speaker and has been reciting poems and telling stories longer than she’s going to admit.  She has performed for a variety of audiences, including at the Ocean Shores Celtic Festival and was a founding instructor at Olympia’s Shakespeare Experience. Kimberly honed her event organizational skills as the Golf Production Team Leader for the Richard Karns StarDays Celebrity Golf Tournament.  In her real life, she is a Legislative policy analyst bent on saving the world from toxic chemicals and climate change. She is a former member of the Washington State Bar Association Disciplinary Board and currently serves as a Commissioner for the City of Lacey Historical Commission. She is a fan of Captain Grammar Pants.