KRASS Journal promises breadth, quality and an endless supply of brilliant minds

“KRASS is a nod to the function of a magazine as something to be taken home, read in bed, cut up, stuck up, passed around,” says Sanja Grozdanic, co-founder of the new publication. “We were motivated by the lofty ideals one finds studying Journalism or Literature, that are quickly extinguished in the real world. The medicine for that is to create your own world – one that happens to grant you access to a never-ending supply of brilliant minds.”

Based in Adelaide, Australia, KRASS is a joint editorial venture between Sanja and Tess Martin. It’s got an incredible mix of features; with Molly Crabapple and Ana Kraš, a Catalan bank robber and Australia’s leading human rights lawyer to name but a few. The journal sits comfortably in that strange space between a book and a magazine; it’s weighty without being impenetrable and its design is distinctive without overwhelming the content.

Among the interviews are photo-essays from Bryan Liston, Henrik Purienne and Robert Gaudette, editorials and written features spanning a breadth of subjects with confidence and a personal, idiosyncratic voice. Sanja describes Australian publishing culture as “a unique beast.” She says: “On one hand, we have the most concentrated media in the democratic world – in Adelaide, it is near-impossible to buy a non-Murdoch daily newspaper. On the other, we are in the midst of a print renaissance. We have… many publications breaking the paradigm and returning to high-quality, long-form journalism. There are incredible Australian writers and they are imagining their own mediums to broadcast their voices. That’s perfectly bold, bratty and brilliant.”

Launching this week, the ad-free journal is dedicated to politics, poetry, art and fashion. Designed by Simon Pearce at Frame Creative, the KRASS team has already got going with issue two which promises interviews with both Noam Chomsky and former Australian prime minister, Malcolm Fraser.