Clare Hutton joins Mark Sanford Gross and Cliona O’Farrelly for the final conversation in the 2026 Speakers Series, part of Ulysses in 80’s annual 80-day global reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

A leading Joyce scholar and author of Serial Encounters: Ulysses and the Little Review, Clare brings us back to the extraordinary story of how Ulysses first reached its readers — and to the women who helped bring Joyce’s novel into the world.

The conversation moves through the history of Ulysses, its publication, its readers, and the ways we continue to encounter the novel more than a century later.

And as Clare reminds us, Molly Bloom gets the last word in Ulysses.

So it seems only fitting that, for the last words of the 2026 Speakers Series component of Ulysses in 80, we leave them with Clare Hutton.

Visit ulyssesin80.com to explore the complete archive of Ulysses in 80 2026 — an annual 80-day global reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses and for more information on the annual reading.

Ulysses for Everyone.

Ulysses in 80
A global reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses, moving through the book together over eighty days.

📧 Contact: readingulyssesin80@gmail.com

The 2026 reading is June 1 to August 19th.

In this episode of Ulysses in 80, Mark Sanford Gross and Cliona O’Farrelly are joined by Daniel Mulhall, former Irish Ambassador to the United States and author of Ulysses: A Reader’s Odyssey.

Mulhall comes to Ulysses first and foremost as a reader—one who has returned to Joyce’s novel throughout a diplomatic career that took him around the world. The conversation moves from his own roots in Ulysses to Ireland then and now, identity, tolerance, and why he believes Joyce’s century-old novel remains a novel for modern times.

And, as the U80 journey reaches Ithaca, there is also the question of coming home—both in Ulysses and after a lifetime spent representing Ireland abroad.

Ulysses for Everyone.

Ulysses in 80
A global reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses, moving through the book together over eighty days.

📧 Contact: readingulyssesin80@gmail.com

The 2026 reading is June 1 to August 19th.

Mark Sanford Gross and Cliona O'Farrelly are joined by Daragh O'Connell, Associate Professor of Italian at University College Cork and Director of the Centre for Dante Studies in Ireland, for a lively journey between Dante and Joyce—and some of the surprising places where their worlds meet.

From Ulysses' extraordinary final voyage in Dante's Inferno to the echoes that surface in Joyce's Ulysses, the conversation wanders through Homer, Circe, Dante's famous "midway" opening, and the little nuggets that send us back to these books again and again.

Why did Joyce keep returning to Dante? And why, centuries later, do readers keep returning to both of them?

Part of Ulysses in 80 — Ulysses for Everyone.

Visit ulyssesin80.com

Ulysses in 80
A global reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses, moving through the book together over eighty days.

📧 Contact: readingulyssesin80@gmail.com

The 2026 reading is June 1 to August 19th.