About Berm

Berm aims to provide a well-designed, printed, and paid opportunity for artists to create new work in mediums they might not otherwise have the time to create in.

Through rate, scheduling, and editorial transparency, Berm promotes a high standard for arts and literary organizations to not only pay artists a working wage, but to help provide models of work that start with transparency in mind.

As a magazine, Berm puts diversity at the core of our artist selection process. As we are not open for submissions, significant work goes into ensuring that support for BIPOC and queer artists are at the forefront of the publication's pitch process. Editorial steps are taken to ensure that we preserve an artist or writer's language, tone, and preferred engagement style while creating for Berm.

Working wages for artists and writers are important to Berm. Using the Wage for Work (W.A.G.E.) model, Berm builds in 74% of each budget for artist, writer, and photographer fees.

As a member of the Portland Arts community, Berm provides full budget breakdowns, reflections on the process of creating a magazine, and an independent publishing research survey on our public website for anyone to use as a resource.

Rates

As of Issue 6, "Interactive," our rates paid to contributors included:

You can find past year's rates here.

Schedule

Scheduling transparency is also important to Berm. All contributors are provided with a link to our full production schedule, which includes not only draft due dates, feedback periods, and when payments are released, but also our own internal deadlines for pitching, design, and printing.

Most issues follow a six-month production schedule to allow ample time for drafting, feedback, and design.

Berm is released twice annually.

Funding

Since 2021, Berm has been funded through the support of donors, arts grants, and fellowships. The sales for each issue do not cover the full budget of production. For reflections on this process see "The Economics of Berm" in our fourth issue Money or the Issue breakdowns section of our website.

As of 2025, Berm is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Berm must be made payable to "Fractured Atlas" only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. If you would like to help support Berm, you can do so through via this link.

Previous Issue Breakdowns

You can find breakdowns of our previous issues, with details on what worked and what didn't, here.