“Perhaps, we’ll see,” said Lara LoBrutto in an interview with the Daily when asked if she planned on publishing any of her writing in the near future. The sophomore international relations major and Chinese minor is a prodigious writer. In high school, LoBrutto kept up a film review blog and, over the summer, wrote for Atwood Magazine, a digital arts magazine based in New York City. “I haven’t really published anything lately,” she noted of her writing. “It’s more of a personal thing.”
Now, in her second year at Tufts, LoBrutto is a writing fellow, advising fellow Jumbos on their papers. The job entails critiquing not only students’ writing, but also their argumentation and ideation. “I decided to be a writing fellow because I’ve always loved to write, and I also really like to work with other students. I wanted to find a way to integrate those two things,” said LoBrutto. “It was an interesting process of learning how to fellow.”
LoBrutto is more than a writer, however; she can sing as well. The songstress takes voice lessons at Tufts, where she has honed her process with the help of her teacher, Carol Mastrodomenico. Each song is a new story which, when first approaching it, LoBrutto rewrites in her own words. First LoBrutto translates the song into her own vernacular, which is especially helpful with songs in languages other than her native English. With the story now in her own terms, she assigns emotions to each part of the song.
“This is how I find creativity and self-expression in singing,” LoBrutto said over electronic message. “My songs always evolve over time. Sometimes I'll be walking around campus and discover a thought that applies to one of my pieces or a person that I would want to sing to. I like the fact that the process is never complete, and I can always sing the same song with a new intention.”
Lara LoBrutto fine tunes her singing, writing with her own vernacular
After writing for Atwood magazine this summer, Lara LoBrutto looks ahead to her career with writing, dance and singing.
