Profiles 3
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Dec 2024
A literary journal based in Dublin, Profiles is dedicated to exploring portraiture in prose and visual art. Scroll down for our Q&A with editors and founders Clare Healy and Sarah Sturzel.
Name
Clare Healy and Sarah Sturzel
Job title
Editors
What is Profiles?
A literary and visual arts journal showcasing character-driven writing and portraiture, published annually in Dublin, Ireland.
What makes it different to the rest?
Part of our mission — aside from simply giving a platform to some of the most promising writers, translators and artists that Ireland and the wider community have to offer — is to create a dialogue between literature and visual arts, and we felt that character was a particularly exciting lens through which to achieve this. In each of our issues, we pair pieces of writing and artworks to hopefully enrich — and/or challenge — readers’ interpretation of both.
Who makes Profiles?
More or less just us two, although we’re very lucky to have friends and loved ones who give us much-needed help with things like website maintenance and set-up for our events. In particular we have to give a shout-out to Ruaidhrí Kiersey/Faro-P, who produces a radio broadcast for Dublin Digital Radio every year, featuring interviews with and readings by our contributors, as well as original music inspired by their work.
Who reads it?
Ireland has an extraordinarily vibrant magazine scene and we’re very happy to have found a strong readership at home, although we’ve found smaller audiences in the UK, North America and mainland Europe too. We sell Profiles at bookshops and art galleries, suggesting our audience is made up of literature and art lovers alike, which is exactly what we wanted.
Why do you work in magazines?
There’s so much to love about it — the ability to help emerging talent find an audience, the thrilling groove you get into during the production cycle, the beautiful object you get to hold in your hand when it’s all done.
Aside from the magazine, what else are you involved in?
We have our yearly radio special, as well as a launch event and art exhibition, all of which gives audiences the chance to learn more about the content of each issue. As for our day jobs, Sarah is an editor for an educational publisher and Clare works in communications in the humanitarian sector.
What would you change about Profiles if you could?
We’d love more time to dedicate to it, and to be able to publish more pieces per issue — alas, at the moment budgetary constraints and the fact that we both work full-time are stumbling blocks.
Where do you see Profiles in five years?
That’s a big question! We’re hoping to make Profiles even more collaborative for the writers, translators and artists involved — for our most recent issue, we paired a writer (Tom Roseingrave) and an artist (Salvatore of Lucan) to work together, with Tom producing a short story and Salvatore a portrait inspired by Tom’s protagonist. This was a vision we had in mind from the journal’s inception but we never had the resources to do it until this year. We’re aiming to make this a regular feature of our future issues, rather than only publishing submissions. We’re also planning to run more events, such as workshops with writers and artists we admire, to complement the magazine. Watch this space!
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