Declan Mc Cavana and Julie McDonald of the Paris Bloomsday Group

In this episode of Turning Points, Patricia Killeen welcomed Declan Mc Cavana and Julie McDonald, who both hail from Belfast, Northern Ireland.Declan Mc Cavana MBE, is a senior lecturer of Rhetoric at the Ecole Polytechniqe in Paris, and is also President and co-founder of the French Debating Association. Julie McDonald worked in Ireland and the UK as an actress, was a theatre director in Bucharest, before embarking on a career in academia and international relations in Paris. 

Declan and Julie are both members of theParis Bloomsday Group which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. 

James Joyce’s Ulysses was published by Sylvia Beach, the owner of the Paris legendary bookstore Shakespeare and Company on February 2nd, 1922. That magical date was also Joyce’s birthday… 

In 2022, the centenary year of the publication of Ulysses, on Bloomsday 16th June, (the day Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses took place in 1904), the magic will continue and Joyce and his masterpiece, will be celebrated to the hilt at a picnic in the courtyard of the Centre Culturel Irlandais at 12h30, followed by a Centenary Bloomsday afternoon at Shakespeare and Company, from 15h00-18h00

Julie, Declan, and the Paris Bloomsday Group will perform at both events and to get us into the Bloomsday mood, they both read passages from Ulysses for Turning Points. 

www.centreculturelirlandais.com

www.shakespeareandcompany.com

Listen to the episode here: