Interview with Our Illustrious Editor, Viola Ragonese
Papers: We know that you're currently living in Dublin, do you mind telling us more about growing up in Italy and what led you to ultimately achieving your Masters in Philosophy?
Viola: More than growing up in Italy, what impacted me the most was growing up in the Tuscan countryside! I had a very calm and isolated childhood (I’m an only child), which led me to dedicate a lot of time to books. My favourite book was “The Baron in the Trees,” by Italo Calvino. A lot of my memories of growing up in Tuscany feel a bit magical – for instance, every year my whole family would gather, and we would collect all the olives from the trees in our garden. The olive oil we would have for the rest of the year would be the one made from those very same olives! This peaceful childhood equipped me both with a deep love of literature and with an irresistible desire to travel the world and see, with my own eyes, all the wonderful realities that I’d been reading about in my books. Simultaneously, I was eager to embark on an intellectual journey by questioning and examining all those concepts that are so easily taken for granted, which led to my philosophy studies. This is what philosophy ultimately consists of: questioning the world around us and investigating counterfactual ways it could be, which is also the very first step that needs to be taken towards making a change in the world – understanding that what we see is only one way things could be, and imagining potential alternative ways of existing.
Papers: We’re sure all the memorable moments in the countryside really shaped you into the creator you are today, and had a major influence on your voice. For instance, we know you as a former columnist in your writing career, but what does Viola's personal writing style look like? And how have you used your own love of writing to push your passion projects?
Viola: My writing style tends to change with time, but all my short stories have a propensity to be imaginative and surreal; I enjoy blurring the line between dream and reality. I find dreams to be endlessly fascinating, since investigating the surreal sometimes brings us even closer to our truth than examining reality. Think about when you wake up after a dream with the feeling that you have almost grasped something essential, something that could have given meaning to everything. I love investigating this “almost” in my writing.
As far as my passion projects are concerned, being a writer has always been my dream. Now that I’m no longer dedicating all my time to my academic degree, I really want to devote it to chasing that dream, and helping other new writers do the same. Therefore, I love being part of Papers, because I value being part of a community where we all help each other chase the dream of being a writer.
Papers: That’s a pretty great way to look at it. The best work often derives from dreams, and it’s striking to imagine what our subconscious mind is capable of. Speaking of capabilities, a little bird told us that you can speak EIGHT languages! What made you want to learn so many languages? Is it because you travel often?
Viola: So, first of all, I wish I spoke them all! I only speak four of those languages fluently, but it is true that I have studied eight of them throughout my life, and hopefully I’ll get to study even more in the future! Languages are endlessly fascinating to me because they are the most crucial tools we have to shape our thinking. Learning to speak a new language is ultimately about exploring a whole different way you could think. One might have the illusion, given by dictionaries, that each language has its own version of every word of your own language. That is not actually true! Each language is a completely different way of structuring human thought, and the correspondences between words that make translations possible are only due to the fact that human thinking tends to always reach the creation of certain concepts, no matter the language.
Papers: Woah! That is something we never knew. You seem to have a pretty strong understanding of philosophy, which is why you’re also the creator behind Our Dream Journal on Papers Publishing. Can you talk to us more about designing that segment, and how you see it expanding in the future?
Viola: This segment is motivated by my deep love for dreams and surreal writing. As I was saying earlier, dreams bring us close to deep and often uncomfortable truths about ourselves and the world around us without ever delivering these revelations in a straightforward way. That is what makes them the perfect source of writing ideas, together with the fact that they often offer us new and unprecedented ways to look at things that we are really familiar with. I’m hoping that Our Dream Journal will become a space for people to leave rationality behind and embrace the dreamy and the surreal in the way they write. I think something really beautiful and touching can come from this section!
Papers: And last but not least, what do you enjoy the most about being a part of Papers? And outside of Papers, where does Viola see themselves in the years to come?
Viola: I enjoy being a part of Papers because it means being part of a community of writers and editors who share the same values as myself, especially believing in the importance of helping new writers get published. This is particularly essential since it can be really tricky for people to pursue a career in writing, which differs from most careers insofar as there is no straightforward and unique path to being a published writer. Some try to reach this goal through academia, others write on the side while working in a different field: there are endless ways to get there, which might make it seem like there are no ways to get there. At Papers, we provide a space for good writing to get published, regardless of how it gets here. As far as where I see myself in the years to come, it is all quite uncertain right now: I don’t know where I’ll live or what I’ll be doing. What I do know for sure is that I want to keep editing and writing in some form or another, since these are the two activities that make me happiest.