Menu
What Is SAND About?
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.