SEATTLE, WA - On Saturday, June 14, 2025 at 2:00 PM, The Wild Geese Players of Seattle will present their 28th annual Bloomsday celebration: a staged reading from Ulysses, James Joyce’s groundbreaking modernist novel, at the Ballard Public Library (5614 22nd Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98107). The performance is free and open to the public.

Since 1998, The Wild Geese Players of Seattle have presented an annual Bloomsday reading from Ulysses to celebrate James Joyce’s groundbreaking work of fiction whose originality and unvarnished depiction of personal thought resulted in it being banned and burned as “pornographic” on both sides of the Atlantic when released starting in 1918.

Bloomsday is named for Ulysses’ main character, Leopold Bloom, and refers to the 24-hour period of June 16, 1904 in which the novel Ulysses is set. In 2024, more than 90 Bloomsday events around the world took place.

This year’s reading will feature Episode 15 –”Circe”, Part 2, a chapter full of hallucinations and nightmares that 1920’s censors found particularly objectionable. “Circe” takes place in Dublin, Ireland’s red-light district, “Nighttown”, and features sex-workers, cross-dressing, gender-fluidity, adultery, bestiality and other hidden fears and desires of Leopold Bloom, the novel’s hero.

Here in the United States, Ulysses was banned until 1933, when US District Judge John M. Woolsey, who had spent a month reading the novel, announced that, while

“Ulysses' is a rather strong draught to ask some sensitive though normal person to take. But my considered opinion, after long reflection, is that whilst in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac…."'Ulysses' may, therefore, be admitted into the United States.” (https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/01/09/specials/joyce-court.html?_r=1)

The Wild Geese Players of Seattle are a diverse group of people who share an interest in Irish literature. We believe that poetry and certain novels are best read aloud, that some works are better heard than read.

For more information, visit the Wild Geese Players’ website www.WildGeeseSeattle.org or view the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/4023257241236371/.
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