Press

Lola, a Berlin cultural magazine in English, describes itself as follows: “We love culture. We love music, art, film, sex life and human interest stories. We also love Berlin. We combine these loves to produce a magazine, website and podcast dedicated to them.” In the summer of 2020, they interviewed our Editor in Chief about SAND for their Media Matters series. Here’s an extract:

Issue 21 marked ten years of SAND. Do you think the purpose of the journal is the same today as it was when it first started?
I think our main functions as a journal have held steady: to bring readers, editors, artists, writers, translators, into a single conversation on the page. And to amplify interesting and exciting work that our readers are unlikely to have seen elsewhere, with a growing emphasis on featuring artists and writers from groups and places that have been systematically sidelined by the publishing industry. Our tastes and preoccupations keep evolving with the team, but that’s an advantage of the journal format. We live and publish in the moment. We’ve grown a bit more professional – recently, after a decade of volunteering and scraping by, we finally received public funding from the Berlin Senate – but through it all, we’ve sustained radically independent ideals. Our tastes are still uncompromising. We care about craft and voice and edge, not favoritism or name recognition.

 

For the most recent issue, you also acknowledge the role of the pandemic, stating, “we’ve gotten to know the pieces even more intimately, seeing them in a surreal light we could not have imagined when we began this issue.” How has the pandemic affected SAND this year, especially in terms of not being able to host a launch party for issue #21?
As a publication that thrives on community, the necessary suspension of face-to-face gatherings in Berlin has been devastating. That launch party especially. On two nights a year, that’s how we celebrate all the creativity and hard work that was distilled into the physical object of the new issue. As our fiction editor, Ashley Moore, mournfully observed, there is no substitute for seeing people paging through the freshly printed copies we’ve been working so hard on for months. Hearing how contributors read our favorite lines out loud. And then dancing it out. Our anniversary would have also commemorated those parties themselves, where many Berliners first got to know us (and each other).

Then again, the Internet allowed us to connect with contributors and fans from six continents who never could have made it to the party venue. Our quick-thinking event coordinators, Courtney Gosset and Nadja Poljo, transformed our usual night of readings, artist talks, and dancing into a weekend-long festival we streamed on our YouTube channel, complete with readings, studio visits, animations, interviews between editors and contributors, and a reunion with some of our editorial alumni. We learned a lot from the experience. But we’re still so eager to mingle organically with our creative neighbors again when this is all over.

How important is Berlin as SAND’s location of publishing?

In some ways, publishing is a logical next step for any maturing literary scene. But in a linguistic enclave, it can also be a radical act. Generations of publishers in exile have defied censorship and repression in their countries of origin, from Parisian presses printing 20th century queer writing in English when homosexuality was severely criminalized in both Britain and most places it had colonized, to the publishers in exile of Czech and Hungarian writing during the Cold War. Similarly, an émigré writer such as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o can find space for self-expression abroad that is unavailable to him in Kenya, allowing him to write masterpieces in Gĩkũyũ that speak intimately to the Kenyan – and human – experience from across the ocean. Thanks to his publishers and the miracle of translation, we can read them.

We look to these role models with great respect, but our own case is different. Simply by publishing in our native English, we find ourselves heir to a dark legacy of British and US cultural imperialism. Resisting that legacy, we try to use our platform – and our language’s huge audience – to amplify voices that publishers and curators have often erased or marginalized. We don’t see ourselves as either exiles or emissaries. Berlin, this gathering place, is our chosen home. Currently our team consists of fourteen people with at least eight different passports, and almost all of us moved across borders to live in this singular city. Berlin deeply informs how we read literature and look at art, even if most of the authors and artists we feature live elsewhere.

Read the full interview at Lola.

Community, the Pandemic, and Ten Years of SAND Read More »

Exberliner, founded in 2002 by three journalists from the UK, Romania, and France, is Germany’s largest publication in English, with focuses on culture, reportage, and politics in Berlin, especially its international community. In the summer of 2019, their reporter Madeleine Pollard interviewed our Editor in Chief about what sets SAND apart, Berlin as a haven for international writers, and the question of how newcomers from abroad (especially literary ones) fit into German identity and public cultural funding policy. Here’s an extract:

Is Berlin still the haven for expat writers it’s supposed to be?

Berlin is just miles ahead any other city I know when it comes to its support of non-national literature – i.e. literature in languages besides the country’s official language. This year, the Senat opened applications for writing stipends for non-German-language authors. Do you know of any other city that gives foreign authors a salary for a year to write their book in their own language? It’s only open to six people per year, but they receive €2000 tax free every month! We don’t have the same pressure to conform to what people are doing in the UK or US. Obviously rising rents are a huge issue, but despite the expenses, the writing here is becoming much more sophisticated – maybe a little less avant garde. When I first arrived, there was an English book launch three or four times a year. There’s so much going on now that you’re constantly missing stuff, which really says a lot.

In the latest issue of SAND, the theme is “Out of Place” and in your editor’s note you invite readers to “drop place altogether”. But wouldn’t you agree that a lot of literature produced here has emerged from this very sense of Berlin as a unique place?

There’s a lot of extremely place-specific writing that’s coming out of Berlin because the city almost automatically inspires an interest in the archaeological onion peels of its successive and simultaneous identities. But the theme of this edition was sparked by these posters in Berlin which offered to pay foreigners to “go home”, and the political uproar over the xenophobic takeover of the Interior Ministry. We have this crisis with what it means to be a Berliner. The fact many Berliners don’t identify as German despite having a German passport isn’t just a reflection of their failure to integrate; it’s also a reflection of Germany’s failure to include them in its self-definition. In the city that accepted the most refugees in 2015 and has been the site of an international literary renaissance, we are at the frontline of these questions as to what it means to be out of place.

Read the full interview at Exberliner.

Expanding the Definition of German Literature Read More »

Lambda Literary is the biggest LGBTQ literary community in the world, best known for their prestigious annual book awards, nicknamed the “Lammys.” In spring 2018, we contacted them about the MoonLIT LGBT+ Festival that was taking place in the southern Philippines. This initial contact led to a months-long email exchange between our Editor in Chief Jake Schneider and Brandi Spaethe from Lambda – and eventually to this interview on their website, which we’ve extracted here: 

You mentioned before that you publish writing with queer and trans themes. Does every issue include voices from the LGBTQ literary community?

Yes. There has never been an official quota, but we publish writing by and about the LGBTQ+ community in every issue. A few recent highlights include shelly feller’s delightfully quirky gender-playful poems (“spangled dandy, i / suture couture de rigueur”), Maija Mäkinen’s story “Yellowstone” about a woman separated from her wife in the apocalypse, George L. Hickman’s flash fiction about a group of trans men reflecting on their deadnames, and Ben McNutt’s terrifically homoerotic photo series of wrestlers.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with the Lambda Literary community?

As queer people, unlike religious or ethnic minorities, we generally start out alone and discover we’re part of a community later. Call it our “You’re a wizard, Harry” moment. And that community is very international.

Sadly internationalism, like queerness, is viewed with suspicion everywhere. The best cure for suspicion is empathy, and the best source of empathy is literature.

Now more than ever, when the side effects of toxic nationalism are causing even some of the worldliest people to forget about problems outside their own countries, we cannot lose sight of our global counterparts. We should especially empathize with the hardships of queer exiles who have experienced persecution for their gender identities and sexual orientations, sometimes in addition to the horrors of war.

Read the full interview at Lambda Literary.

Queerness & Internationalism Read More »

In summer 2018, SAND joined the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), a New York-based network of hundreds of literary journals and small publishers, mostly in the United States. SAND’s Editor in Chief Jake Schneider was interviewed about the experience of publishing an English-language journal in Germany for the CLMP blog. Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the interview:

What are some of the challenges you face publishing in English while existing in Germany?

Publishing in English in Germany is rewarding and gratifying. As an editor anywhere, nothing beats the feeling of a holding a freshly printed issue in your hands and remembering all the love and hard work that went into it. I’d like to emphasize that first.

On to the challenges. It’s fair to say that all independent literary journals are in precarious financial straits, but our location also rules out many of the usual fundraising strategies. In a country where a great many artistic projects are taxpayer-funded—where the arts are still mostly considered a public good—we are largely ineligible for that support, even as taxpayers. But because Germany’s public system functions relatively well, there isn’t the need for the same culture of donations as in the US. And it’s similarly hard to find advertisers. So, for nine years now, we’ve covered our printing costs mainly through issue sales and admission fees to our launch parties. I’m pondering these dilemmas, though. We want to raise more funds so we can start paying contributors at last.

But Berlin is not synonymous with Germany. Not long ago, and for nearly four decades, the city was occupied by four countries and two rival ideologies. West Berlin was physically walled off from both East and West Germany. This urban island, ringed by rivers and lakes, attracted artistic misfits of all stripes: draft-dodgers, muralists, clubgoers, musicians, squatters, punks, and underground poets. Their legacy remains: it’s not your standard European capital.

In other words, Berlin has a long history as a community of outsiders in creative isolation, a metropolis in between countries and systems. SAND sees itself within that history—not as more foreign occupiers, I hope, but as a creative community within this hotbed of self-driven artmaking. And literature in English and many other languages is thriving here. We’re proud to play a part in it.

Read the full interview on the CLMP blog.

Publishing in English in Germany Read More »

In August 2018, KT Browne, editor of the Iceland-based, bilingual ICEVIEW magazine (see her guest post about it from our Profiles in Transnational Publishing series) interviewed our then Managing Editor Simone O’Donovan about SAND for the ICEVIEW website. Since that site is now offline, we are posting the interview here in full.

ICEVIEW: Can you tell me a little bit about SAND? How did it come about and what is its goal?

Simone O’Donovan: SAND has in fact been around longer than I have in been in Berlin. Founded by Becky Crook, the Berlin-based literary journal has been printing biannually for almost ten years! The team has evolved over that time and so too has SAND’s tone of voice. What we aim to represent now are the underrepresented voices across the world in terms of literature and art. With regular events and an excellent community, our roots in Berlin provide us with the inspiration and motivation to explore our city and beyond in search of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and art that speak to a wider audience.

 

Should society make an effort to incorporate international perspectives in its literature and culture? Why or why not?

Yes, yes and yes! To put it quite simply, imagine how boring not only literature, but also art, film and music would be without any international influence? Coming from Ireland, a country that has had an island mentality up until quite recently, I am particularly aware of this and very grateful to be involved in projects that go out of their way to incorporate worldly perspectives.

 

To what extent do you think language barriers are at play in the construction or deconstruction of community?

Language certainly plays a role in demarcating communities, creating invisible barriers between those that don’t share the same method of communication. I live on a predominantly Arab stretch of Sonnenallee in Berlin, and have no doubt that if I spoke some Arabic, I would be more connected to my direct community. However, languages and dialects – and even the ways in which different communities use the same language – also serve to create social texture. Not only that, languages are amazing identifiers of a shared community and of the various ways communities have made them distinct over the centuries through accent, vocabulary, inflection and cadence. This is something I notice quite often living away from Ireland: simply bumping into someone from Ireland here brings with it a certain ease of communication I wouldn’t necessarily experience with non-Irish English-speakers.

 

With SAND being very much a believer in building local communities, do you think that digital life has expanded or hindered the development of communities?

I think I fall on the side of expanded here. Admittedly though, all I can speak for are the communities that I myself have experience with. As much as I admire and am excited by the many back-to-the-roots communities that seek to preserve and uphold traditional values which have existed for thousands of years, I do think the benefits of digital life have created opportunities for communities we never thought possible. The reality is that digital life is becoming more and more unavoidable now, and the best way forward is to work together with your community, to stay as informed and open-minded as possible.

 

What are SAND’s goals for the future?

One of our main goals is to cast our net a bit further afield in all that we do: our events, our submissions and our stockists. We have collaborated with some wonderful organisations in the past, such as the British Council and Ă-Festival, a poetry and translation festival in Vietnam, and we look forward to more interesting partnerships in the future. Currently, our only international stockist is in Amsterdam, but we hope to bring SAND to more bookshelves across the world in the coming years. And finally, our submissions: we want to reach out to communities in corners of the world that our readers perhaps haven’t previously explored culturally. We take great pride in representing unheard voices and new perspectives and we constantly seek to develop this core aspect of SAND

 

One of ICEVIEW’s most prominent themes is that of isolation. Do you think that experiencing isolation and solitude is conducive to creativity and artmaking, or does it hinder these processes? 

Everyone’s creative process differs greatly. While silence and solitude works for some, bustle and sensorial overload may work for others. While the romantic image of living in a log cabin on the coast of somewhere like Iceland writing a best-selling novel is tempting, I think what fuels creativity – such as location, situation and headspace – ebbs and flows. What is a winning routine for you one year may require a change the next. 

 

How would you describe Berlin’s literary community? What are some of its core values?

I’ve been in Berlin for seven years now and I am still exploring its literary scene. Although the rumour has been spreading for a while that Berlin is officially ‘over’, I think the creative scene here is very much thriving. With more people arriving here every day you continue to have new voices, ideas and cultures adding to the diverse dialogue of the city.

Language and Community Read More »

Ashley Moore, one of our fiction editors, wrote a guest post for Aerogramme Writers’ Studio about our fiction submissions and what sets a story apart from the rest of the pile. Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the article:

A round of fiction submissions really is a beautiful beast: dense, overwhelming, intoxicating, and at its very best, delightful. At SAND journal, [we] make our way through at least 600 unsolicited stories each submissions period and are only able to publish around 8–12 of those. That means passionate pleas for our favorites and tough decisions once we’ve narrowed our selection down. But how does a writer get their work into the final rounds of editing? And how can a piece stand out among hundreds – or even thousands – of other stories?

USE A FRESH ANGLE AND VOICE

Many writers would be surprised how often editors read different versions of the seemingly same stories about f(l)ailing romances, being a child of divorce, the banality of the suburbs, and “magical women.” It’s not that the writing’s bad. In fact, it’s often impressive. And it’s not that writers shouldn’t be exploring these topics—except for magical women, who use their beauty, elegance, intelligence, or even alcohol tolerance to somehow save the lives of troubled men. Both men and women can save themselves, without white horses or ego-stroking love interests. It would be much more refreshing to read the other insightful ways that women and men can be portrayed.

Read the full article at Aerogramme.

Standout Fiction Submissions Read More »

3 May 2018

What Is SAND About?
Lettrétage Asks Five Questions

Before our Issue 17 launch party at Berlin’s independent literary center Lettrétage, our Editor in Chief answered five questions about SAND. The answers are a good introduction to who we are and what we care about. Here is an excerpt from the beginning of the interview:

When and why did you start your project?

SAND was founded in 2009 by Becky Crook, a writer and translator of Norwegian and German literature into English, who moved back to the US before I even arrived here. She left SAND in good hands. I can’t speak for Becky’s motivations, but as I understand it, there was a close-knit English writing community in Mitte back then – as she describes it, “writers sitting around in cafés writing about sitting around in cafés writing” – and she founded SAND to showcase their work. We’ve still never met in person, though I did serve a recipe of hers (Norwegian rhubarb compôte with cream) at our most recent team meeting.

We’re still dishing up the same publication some sixteen issues later. After focusing on Berlin-based authors in the early years, we’ve lately been publishing more and more writing, translations, and art from around the world, while simultaneously trying to play a larger role in our local literary scene. We see SAND as a reflection of the community here, which is immensely international but always rooted in local, personal connections.

Read the full interview at Lettrétage.

What Is SAND About? Read More »

22 November 2017

SAND Berlin Community Radio Special

On Wednesday 22 November, ahead of our Issue 16 launch at Anita Berber on the Friday, SAND took over Berlin Community Radio for two hours.

Our Events Manager Anton hosted, and a bunch of the team and past contributors presented. Past contributor Inger Wold Lund kicked off the show with a live studio reading from her series Nothing Happened. We had poems from the new issue by Elena Karina Byrne, an essay by our own Charlotte Wührer, a recap and recordings from SAND’s Translating the Untranslatable workshop at the Ă-Festival in Vietnam, music from DJ C63 AMG ahead of his set at the launch, and a good bit of chat besides.

Don’t worry if you missed it. You can listen right here:

 

Two-Hour Radio Special (SAND 16) Read More »

June 2017

International Berlin’s “Language Spaces” in Conversation and Literature
Guest Post by Jake Schneider

Each year, the International Literaturpreis is awarded in Berlin to the best international book published in German translation. The associated blog, EPITEXT, covers topics related to international literature. Our Editor in Chief Jake Schneider contributed a guest post about “language spaces” in Berlin. Here is an excerpt from the article:

When I moved from New Jersey to Berlin five and a half years ago, on the pretext of translating a book of German poems, I found myself in a new Sprachraum, or “language space.” This unfamiliar German notion—of a language wedded to its territory—struck me as odd coming from the Anglosphere, an arbitrary zone that had wafted around the world behind invading red uniforms and Coca-Cola cans. But like many international newcomers to the capital, I later realized I was living not in the “German Sprachraum,” but in an entirely different language landscape specific to Berlin.

The geography of German probably molded that monolith of language space. German is a chain of dialects that span Europe from the southern Baltic to the southern Alps, from Wallonia to the Danube. This is an old, self-contained map. Martin Luther did his part to standardize the formal language across those many dialects. Since then, whatever isolated pockets, colonies, and outposts of German once existed—in places as startling as Estonia, Serbia, Brazil, Texas, and Namibia—were either expelled during the brutally violent population exchanges of the twentieth century or dissolved by local assimilation, and in both cases mostly forgotten. Now, from the vantage point of German-speaking Europe, it looks like a language naturally belongs where it lives.

In the German Sprachraum, we all sit by default under a shared thatched rooftop. The common acronym for German-speaking Europe is DACH, meaning roof: short for Deutschland, Austria, and Switzerland’s Confederatio Helvetica (a mix of German, English, and Latin right there). Besides leaving out Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, and German-speaking corners of Italy and Belgium, the roof obscures small and endangered languages under its formidable shadow—Sorbian, Frisian, Jutlandic, Western Yiddish, Sinte Romani—not to mention the huge living diversity of German dialects.

Read the full article on EPITEXT.

International Berlin’s “Language Spaces” Read More »

30 May 2017

Florian Duijsens, Fiction Editor,
on the Berlin Writing Prize

The Circus’s Nina Dörner interviewed our fiction editor, Florian Duijsens, about the Berlin Writing Prize, the meaning of home, and how the winner can spend a focused winter in Berlin (while staying for free at the Circus Hotel).

This is the second time SAND has been involved with The Reader Berlin’s annual writing prize. How did you develop your work together?

The English-language literary scene in Berlin is as welcoming as it is tightly knit, and Victoria is a key figure in this community, organizing events, retreats, and classes, and generally being a great supporter of writers throughout the city – she’s also a wonderful writer herself! Her dedication to the craft of writing is impressive, and just like us at SAND she’s a true believer in the craft of editing, the way the stellar writing in a strong submission can be made to shine even brighter through patient and precise editing. She’s assembled a marvelous troupe of judges this time around, and I’m very honored to be included.

This year’s theme is “Home is elsewhere.” What sort of responses are you looking forward to?

As a journal based in Berlin, we often receive thinly veiled memoirs of people’s visits to our fine city. And while it’s great to relive the thrill (and inevitable subsequent sense of deception) of discovering a new place, these accounts often treat this new city’s counterpart, “home,” as a stable concept, while to most of us it is anything but.

There are many writers who have addressed this question – I’m thinking of Joan Didion, W.G. Sebald, or Valeria Luiselli, but also former SAND-contributor and former Berliner Brittani Sonnenberg – and I am very excited to read work that similarly goes beyond mere travel reportage, stories or essays that tackle just what it is that we’re looking for each time we pack our bags.

Read the full interview at The Circus blog.

Florian Duijsens on the Berlin Writing Prize Read More »