‘For over ten years now Daniela Cascella has been one of my closest interlocutors: reading early drafts of my books, entering into the works-in-progress with a rare combination of seriousness, tact, possibility and immense generosity. She is an extraordinary editor: attentive to the placing and charge of the smallest phrase, capable of grasping the deeper impulses of a project before I even knew of them myself, and always gently challenging my writing to be braver, stranger, more emphatically itself. I can't imagine publishing a book without talking its pages over with her’.
Kate Briggs, author of The Long Form (Fitzcarraldo, 2023) and This Little Art (Fitzcarraldo, 2017)
‘I met Daniela at the Together, With, To workshop on correspondence and letters in feminist art and writing convened by Dr Alice Butler at The Courtauld Institute of Art in 2022. Speaking on the imaginary conversations, "haunting voices", and sonic tones of her own, chimeric writing, Daniela's talk electrified the room, which buzzed in response to her suggestions of what the writing of research might be: many-headed; many-voiced. A practitioner of language, with words as her material, Daniela is the finest of critical writers, and of editors, too. Reading in English as a second language, she inhabits one's text in a different way to a native speaker, leaving no word, no mark, no break, no space un-thought. I worked with her on an article for her project A Year of Carte Blanche and Other Chimeras at MAP Magazine, in which I imagined a train journey through the Swiss Alps in search of a long dead tubercular subject. Comprising paragraphs pieced together from many of my own sources—conference papers, field notes, a manuscript-in-process—Daniela suggested edits of varying degrees (removing a word, a sentence, a paragraph...) which transformed the piece, giving it form as well as flow. But above all, I remember how she noticed something I hadn't seen: the longer length of my sentences when describing an ascent to the Alps. How, she said, could I work with the "breathless sentence", with the reader's experience mirroring that of the researcher/writer's own breathlessness when moving up to higher altitudes? This is just one example of Daniela's creative, attentive, and intuitive editing; of the thrill I experience in having my work considered by none other than her’.
Gemma Blackshaw, Professor of Art History, Royal College of Art London
‘Daniela has been and continues to be an invaluable source of support in reviewing and revising texts translated in both directions between Italian and English. Her sensitive understanding of both source and target cultures ensures the highest accuracy not only in formal structural elements, but also of tone and register and suitability to the text genre. I am always enthused by the great joy that Daniela finds in language and all its peculiarities and opportunities. Her talents, her expertise and her kindness ensure that every collaboration is a very rewarding one’.
Katherine Wallis, editor and translator
‘Daniela's thoughtful guidance was instrumental in the development of my writing practice whilst studying for my MA in Fine Art at Bergen Art Academy. The approach was always with the position of the reader in mind; a helpful reminder for us to get out of our own heads. Similar to her approach to writing, her advice was delivered with a softness that came back to several core, yet firm, tenets with which to abide by and to remind the writing self of. Several years later, I still find myself returning to these tenets and mantras’.
Samuel Brzeski, artist and writer
www.samuelbrzeski.com