An Interview With Dionna Santucci

It’s almost time for the next edition of the Beyond Thought Creative Arts journal to be published! Now’s the perfect time to revisit submissions from the past.

Dionna Santucci is currently a sophomore Journalism Major minoring in sociology and anthropology at Emerson College in Boston. Last semester, she submitted her essay “to boston, how I love you” and was accepted (Spring ‘22 Issue, page 10) as one of only two out-of-state submitters in that issue. I had the opportunity to sit down with her and talk about the personal story behind her essay and her exciting work beyond the journal.  

Tell me a little bit about “to boston, how I love you”. What inspired you to write it? 

“So, in “to boston, how I love you” I basically talk about my journey of growing into myself and becoming the person that I always hoped that I would be in a certain way, but never really thought was in my reach. It was basically inspired by just how that wouldn't have ever happened if I didn't come to Boston for school. 

My freshman year was just a lot of reflecting on my past experiences in school and with my relationship with the word “home” because I've moved around a lot. Because of that, it's always a weird question to answer when people ask where I'm from. Currently, I'm technically from Indiana, but I don't stay in Indiana most of the time; that doesn't feel like home. Then there are a lot of places that do feel like home, but it's not because I stayed there for a certain amount of years. It's usually attached to people that live there and the experiences that I've had there. I was just reflecting on that a lot. Especially because in my senior year of high school, I moved to a new state and that was a very difficult time for me. I was very worried that  that college was going to be just as terrible.

At the last minute, I made a leap to go halfway across the country to a new state to go to school. It ended up being one of the best decisions I've ever made, probably the best decision I've ever made for myself. It was really amazing, I spent a lot of my freshman year reflecting, and I decided to put it down into words.”

Was it cathartic to write about those things to help you process? 

“I think so, yeah. It was definitely cathartic. It was a little difficult at times to put into words, the complex feelings I have surrounding concepts like home and where one is from and stuff like that. The essay really helped me realize certain things about myself and how I felt.

I wrote it relatively quickly compared to how I would write other nonfiction work and I think that was because it was coming from a very personal place. I just started writing it like I was writing a little diary entry for myself. 

I think that writing something as if you're writing a diary entry is very helpful when you're trying to work on more introspective writing work.” 

You mentioned your other non-fiction work. What are some things you write?

“I don't have a lot of experience with being published in other journals. I'm a journalism major, I write a lot of journalism-related stuff. My main focus is around the Living Arts and music. I’m a staff writer here at Emerson Five Cent Sound and I'm currently working on an article about the past, present, and future of emo music and how they all intersect. It's very fun and I love doing that kind of stuff, introspective writing that takes you out of the hot seat.

They both have their pros and cons. Writing “to boston, how i love you” was very fun for helping me work through certain emotions. Writing more journalistic think pieces is fun in the way that it is cool to write down my thoughts about things that are pop culture related or to tell someone's story.”

How did you hear about Beyond Thought?

“My friend posted on their Instagram story about Beyond Thought being open for submissions. I think it was either the end of the fall semester or the beginning of the spring semester. I didn't really have anything to do and I was looking to kind of get my work out there a little more outside of the Emerson College bubble. And yeah, I saw that and I was like, that's cool. I looked at the prompt and I was like I can do something based on that I think, and I did.” 

What was the Beyond Thought Submission process like?

“It wasn't difficult. I don't have a lot of experience with being published, so I don't really have a frame of reference to go out, but from what I know it was fairly simple and easy. All of the directions and the submission guidelines were laid out very nicely. They were easy to find and reference whenever I had a question about something. The actual act of filling out the submission form and attaching it was very simple.”

Would you submit to the journal again in the future?

“Yeah, sure. I would definitely submit if a prompt caught my eye again.”

Where can we go to find more of your work? 

“I have my own Muck Rack, it's just this automatic thing that compiles a journalist’s work. If you want more personal stuff, most of my work is attached to the Five Cent Sound blog website. You can just search my name and all my work will come up on there. Same for the Berkeley Beacon. I do have a medium I post a lot to also, it's just @dionnasantucci.”

Interested in reading “to boston, how I love you”? Here’s a peek at the first page: