SAND Literature and Art

Founded in 2009 by Becky Crook, SAND is a twice-annual literary and art journal created by a passionate international team in Berlin. On and off the page, we aim to foster a community-led approach and break down barriers within the often-hierarchical and homogeneous publishing world by committing ourselves to inclusivity, collaboration, and mutual support while publishing work that is as diverse, experimental, international, and subversive as Berlin itself.

Featuring work by writers, translators, and artists from around the world, SAND seeks out fresh and underrepresented perspectives and has long amplified the voices of writers and artists who are LGBTQ+, BIPOC, women, nonbinary, disabled, working class, international, and/or geographically marginalized.

We publish both emerging and established writers and artists. Stories that first appeared in our pages have been included in three Best Small Fictions anthologies and have been shortlisted for two Stack awards. Our fiction contributors have gone on to win the Nordic Prize and the German Book Prize. Artists featured in SAND have received an award from TIME Magazine and been collected by museums.

Contributing poets have been honored with the Hawker Prize for Southeast Asian Poetry, the Brunel International African Literature Prize, the Georg Büchner Prize, a New York Times Best Poetry of the Year listing, and the European Union Award for Literature. Our translators have received the US National Translation Award and been named Literary Translator of the London Book Fair.

SAND is part of Berlin’s lively independent literary and art scene. We periodically host physical and virtual events – including our well-known twice-annual issue launches – and collaborate with the creative communities of Berlin, Europe, and the wider world. We celebrated our tenth anniversary at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic with a weekend-long festival of writing, art, and music streamed on YouTube.

Country of Publication & Year Established

AI Policy

Human-created work preferred, but limited AI use may be permitted in some circumstances (see their site for details)