Hi there!
My name is Claudio Rau, and I am a graduate student, writer, and editor.
In addition to my professional experience working in newspapers and publications, my writing blossoms from a passion I developed at an early age for fiction and non-fiction writing.
About Me
Having emigrated to the United States from Italy at a young age, writing became my way of integrating into American society as I struggled to adapt to the local culture and language. Admittedly, my first works in elementary school were not extremely original, but the exercise of delving into my thoughts and trying to transform them into original pieces of my own became extremely formative. Not only did it help me learn the language, but it also developed key skills in grammar and style, which would eventually allow me to pursue higher levels of writing and editing.
With time, I expanded my horizons into journalism and non-fiction. My writing today mainly consists of commentary on political theory and current events.
I write and edit in both English and Italian.
Formative Experiences
A particularly formative experience was that as Editor-in-Chief of the student publication, Hortensia: the Post, where I learned key skills in management as I oversaw the editing & publication process of every article from start to finish. This experience had a steep learning curve in many skills, but particularly, it allowed me time to focus on honing my skills in editing, something that I had previously only reserved for editing my own pieces. Despite some initial struggles, my efforts paid off as the results quantified: streamlined publication processes and new schedules reduced workload on the publication’s teams, and allowed us to increase the volume of articles published by four times that of the previous year, just in the first semester of activities.
My editing work would not stop there. I volunteered as a member of the Publications Committee for the Democratic Left, the official magazine of the Democratic Socialists of America. Here, I would master skills in copyediting, while also taking on bigger projects through structural first-edits. Thus far, for the Democratic Left, I’ve completed second-edits on 5 published articles (6,422 words total), and first-edits on 2 articles (3,910 words total).
In addition to these two roles, I’ve also written for several other student publications, such as Globetrotter 360* and the Official Gazette of Giovani Universitari in Parlamento, and gained experience in reporting as part of the 2023 World Food Forum’s Young Journalists program.