Divya Venkataraman is a lawyer-tu rned-writer whose work has been published in Vogue Australia, GQ Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald, Time Out and SBS. With articles ranging from social action to arts, Divya currently covers cultu re, fashion and travel content across Vogue Australia , Vogue Living and GQ Australia. I was thrilled to chat with her and discuss her journey as a writer, the importance of uplif ting diverse female voices, and her hopes for the future of journalism.
CW: Discrimination AS: Hi Divya, thank you for taking the time to chat with us. Could you please tell us a bit about yourself?
AS: You graduated with a degree in Law and Arts in 2018, and you’ve already made massive leaps and bounds in your career journey. What motivates you? DV: The idea of wanting to do something that I’m genuinely interested in every day is my biggest motivator, and I saw what it was like not to be able to do that. Personally, working in mergers and acquisitions at a law firm was not a fulfilling space, so that experience allowed me to ask myself: ‘How do I make my day-to-day life something that I actually get excited for?’ AS: You’re working as a Content Editor for Vogue Australia, Vogue Living, and GQ Australia. How do you juggle coming up with new ideas, writing and editing without burnout?
48-hour relevancy. The most useful tip is to find purpose in these things for yourself and not through external validation. Writing news stories about what a Kardashian wore is one aspect of the job, but you also get to do work that feels purposeful to you. You can balance creating entertaining quick bite-size content, and that can have its own space alongside longer, more in-depth pieces. AS: What article have you written that meant a lot to you?
ARTS & LIFESTYLE
DV: I’m a content editor at Vogue Australia, Vogue Living and GQ Australia. I spend my days writing and producing content. Creating content can sound a bit mysterious for people not in the media world, but it just involves pitching articles during morning meetings and writing them throughout the day. Some will be very short burn news, while others will be longer interview features. It’s not always in-depth features or glamorous reporting - there is definitely a mix of everything. I’m also involved in the technical side of things like uploading onto the websites, sourcing imagery, using design, and working with photoshop.
DV: I had a great time writing this piece last year about Bernardine Evaristo, the author of Girl, Woman, Other and the first black woman to win the Booker Prize. It was an amazing opportunity to interview someone I’ve admired for a long time, and my past self from two years ago would never have imagined having this interview. AS: Talk us through your creative process. DV: Chaos (laughs) I like to look at an idea from all angles, especially if it’s a feature or a conceptual piece, and write down all my thoughts. It’s a complete mess, and nothing is orderly, but I think having way too much material is comforting because then you can go in and strip it all back to the bones. Writing something is the first part of it, but it’s the editing where the real work happens. Especially in the digital world where you’re writing 3-4 stories per day, you don’t get the luxury of doing that all the time.
DV: It’s a constant challenge to balance the pace of things, especially when so many news stories have
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