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15 years of SAND: Celebrating Berlin’s independent literary magazine

We sat down with Ruby Mason, managing director of the multilingual literary magazine and Berlin community institution SAND.

SAND managing director Ruby Mason. Photo: Makar Artemev
SAND managing director Ruby Mason. Photo: Makar Artemev

Since its founding by Becky Crook in 2009, the biannual literary magazine SAND has become a fixture of Berlin’s anglophone writing scene. With an emphasis on diversity, multilingualism and formal innovation, SAND publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction and art from all over the world.

It is also beloved as a community institution – known for hosting launch parties, appearing at book and magazine fairs, and having a large, welcoming, all-volunteer team. We caught up with managing editor Ruby Mason, who took time out from preparations for the forthcoming Issue 28 to look back on 15 successful years. 

How long have you been involved at SAND, and in what capacity? 

I started in 2017. And I think a lot of us at SAND have a similar kind of story, which is that most of us don’t come from Berlin or even Germany, so we arrived in Berlin looking for a community and wanting to connect with the literary scene here, then found SAND and got involved from there. I initially came in to help out with communications and social media.

We’ve always had long-running team members – our current editor-in-chief, Ashley Moore, has been at SAND even longer than me. The team tends to change and move around as people leave Berlin, or as life situations change. When the former managing editor stepped back after five years, she asked me if I wanted to take it on, and I did. I’ve now been managing editor for three or four years. 

When you make a magazine, so much happens behind closed doors.

What does the team look like? Each issue has a nice long masthead… 

It’s funny, I think people are often surprised when they see how many people are on the team, but then, at times, I feel as if we need to bring more people on for all the things we want to do. The core team has hovered between 12 and 15 over the years; that seems to be the sweet spot. We’re all volunteers, doing this on evenings and weekends; some of us have children or demanding day jobs.

So having a large team gives us some buffer. Also, as a magazine that tries to be inclusive – and to publish international voices, marginalised voices – it helps to have a big, diverse team of people with varying backgrounds. It makes it a truly collaborative process. And on a social note, I’ve met so many amazing people at SAND and developed loads of great relationships that way. 

What kind of work do you look out for in your submissions pile? 

I mean, I can only speak for myself, but for me it means works that are playful – maybe not the most heavily workshopped and “professional” pieces but rather pieces that take on familiar topics from an interesting angle or that use an unconventional form.

I love anything that plays with language, or with languages – multilingual poems, self-translations. We often get submissions around topics of identity and linguistic identity. I really like that, because it’s a topic that we think about a lot as a team, most of us being migrants and some of us being migrants twice over. It’s nice that we have readers all over the world who are also thinking about these questions. 

Has much changed about SAND over the last 15 years? 

I believe Berlin’s English-language scene was much smaller back in 2009, and there weren’t as many opportunities there for writers not working in German to get together and have a platform. Since then, I think the magazine has gotten more international, which is great.

And we are actually seeing more Berlin work again, recently – we’re still publishing a lot of international writers, but for the last few issues in particular, we’ve just seen loads of really strong submissions from Berlin, which is probably testimony to the great things that are happening in the Berlin literary scene right now: The Reader, the Writers Workshop, the AKIMBO events and so on. 

A stack of issues of SAND magazine. Photo: @sandjournalberlin
Photo: @sandjournalberlin

What role do your events play in the magazine’s mission? 

Since day one, they have been central for SAND. It’s always been such a grassroots community project, so gathering together in Berlin is a big part of it. Also, just financially, our launch parties have historically been a big part of making the money we need to print the issues – people pay a little bit to come in and buy the issue there.

And when you make a magazine, so much happens behind closed doors, and the issue exists in your mind for so long, that it’s really important to see people coming to the launch and reading it. For me, an issue isn’t really finished until the launch. 

What can our readers do to support or get involved with SAND

You can pick up a copy in our webshop or at one of the really lovely Berlin bookstores that we’re stocked in, like Curious Fox and She Said, among others. And if you have any work to submit, we publish a lot of both established and emerging writers and artists.

So even if you have never been published before – or if you have been published but you have something you think might be too weird for other magazines – then SAND could be a good bet. Our events are open to everyone; they’re always listed online and on social media. We are very humbled by the loving support that we get from the community. SAND has existed this long, I think, because of people who love print and love indie publishing and want to support it.