Life feels very busy at the moment but I think that’s always the way when you’re immersed in a project and trying to wear different hats. My desk is a blur of to-do lists, notes jotted down on scraps of paper and favourite magazines piled haphazardly with dog-eared pages or propped open, ready for me to return to. I am now deep in the writing and commissioning stage of Issue 02 of our printed publication, Dulcify Journal. Since launching Substack earlier this year, I’ve only mentioned our printed journal in passing and so I am changing that today with this piece about our Editor, Laura Borrelli.
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When I first started thinking about putting Dulcify Journal together, I knew I needed both a designer and an editor. With a background in publishing, I am acutely aware of the areas I excel in and those weaker areas, where I know offsetting work, will mean a much better end result. My past colleague and now beautiful friend, Laura, was an obvious choice. She is one of the most talented editors I know and it is a privilege to have her on our wee team.
Laura was one of the first friends I made when I moved to Edinburgh back in 2017. We worked for the same small, independent educational publisher and quickly bonded over our shared love of literature and food. Our lunch-time visits to Strumpets (which we still mourn the closure of to this day) after a baked potato at Fox & Co, remain some of my happiest memories of my first years in Edinburgh.
We managed a rare in-person catch-up last month (Laura now lives over in Northern Ireland) and I took the opportunity to ask her a few questions for this piece.
Tell me how you got into editing.
Oh okay, well, that is a trip! I was studying languages back in my home-town in Genoa, Italy, and around that time I was working for a social care business. It started out with them asking me (because I have a background in languages) to read through their documents and help them translate them. They had already written them in English but they needed someone to essentially make edits. It was a mix of editing and translating where you need to know what it is they are trying to say in Italian and see that it’s been translated properly.
That started it and then that same year, I took a course about how literature shapes our culture and it was so interesting. It was about how James Joyce’s Ullyses shaped Dublin and it’s architecture and I got really into that and realised that maybe this passion I have for reading can be something more than being a pastime for me.
I started looking into publishing courses from enjoying correcting other people’s work and the idea of doing a job that shapes up culture identity, which I think is something publishers are doing on a day-to-day basis.
So that’s how I got into it — I got into a masters in publishing and then decided I enjoyed editing and found a job in educational publishing.
What is it that interests you specifically about editing?
I think it’s the idea of helping somebody bring their vision to life. When you’ve put so much effort and care and passion into writing something, you can lose objectivity in a way because it becomes really close to you.
It’s great to be that fresh set of eyes — you’re thinking about it almost from a reader’s perspective but you’re that bridge between what is the author intending and what will the reader enjoy.
You’re trying to mediate between the two and come up with creative solutions to get there. So it’s not the nitty gritty detailed stuff — it’s more of how is this reading through? Can it be improved in any way? How can I make it better than what it is? Most of the time it’s already really good writing — it’s that chance to polish it further in a way the author might not be able to because they’ve spent so much time and effort on it.
How do you think being bilingual can help in the editorial field?
I think one of the main things editors do is to try and make meaning as clear as possible and we try and make the text as fluid and as easily understandable as we can. And I think, when English is not your first language, it’s really helpful in that. To a non-native speaker that’s been used to having to really think about grammar, sometimes I find myself having to re-read the same sentence twice and that is when I know this can be improved because I’ve had to think about it twice or sometimes it will make perfect grammatical sense but it’s not the clearest and can be interpreted in two ways and I question what they mean - that is when it can really jump out at you in a way that’s perhaps is different for a native speaker.
Your background is largely in educational publishing, what did you like about editing Issue 01 of Dulcify Journal?
The thing I like about educational publishing is that it makes a clear improvement on people’s lives.
With Dulcify Journal, it was great to see how something that you maybe wouldn’t initially think as directly improving someone’s life, makes a difference by fostering this sense of common ground and building a community.
It was just really inspiring for me to see all of these wonderful people coming together and the passion they have for the industry. And I think it does improve the lives of those that live near to those businesses and also benefits those businesses featured too.
What does food mean to you?
That’s interesting because being Italian, it’s such a big part of our culture and I mean, you’ll go from town to town even within the same area or neighbourhood and people will have slightly different versions of a recipe and they’ll feel really strongly about it. It’s part of family life, I don’t know how else to explain it - I’ve learnt to cook watching my grandmother and my mother cook and it is something you very much tie back to your region, your territory, your cultural identity and above all your heritage. It’s deeply within you and it’s honouring your ancestors and family members, especially once they are no longer here. Every time I make pesto, I think of my grandma and that is why we care so much about food.
My grandma used to say, if you’re cooking it’s because you’re putting love into it, otherwise you’re just making a meal. And that is what it is. It’s a love language, it’s a way of taking care of someone, of keeping tradition alive and passing it down in the most delicious and pleasant way possible.
Can you talk to me about your Christmas Day lasagne.
That is not your typical Italian Christmas Day meal by the way. Essentially my first year studying abroad, I didn’t have much money to buy gifts for my parents, so I decided my gift to my mum would be to organise and make part of the Christmas meal. She could still do all of the decorating that she loves but all the entertaining, inviting people, organising and cooking, she wouldn’t have to do any of that. I was trying to figure out what I could cook because I don’t like our typical Christmas dinner - it is ravioli in broth (that’s actually quite nice) but boiled goose is the main part which I’m not a fan of.
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