about tbr

Our History

One cold, Saturday evening in 2009, friends gathered at a coffee shop on 13th & U Street N.W. We had just left the Horton’s book launch and began a discussion about literature, publishing, MFA programs, doctorates, etc. We, Fred Joiner, Melanie Henderson, Randall Horton and Truth Thomas, now the editors of Tidal Basin Review, figured we could show better than we could tell what we believed a representative and quality table of contents looks like. We knew we could show that quality has no specific, exclusive sound, color, structure, class, education, etc. The conversation and camaraderie birthed Tidal Basin Press.

Tidal Basin Review (TBR), founded on January 4, 2010, is a biannually-published, electronic literary journal with an associated print-on-demand option that features poetry, prose and visual art from the Washington Metropolitan Area and beyond. TBR has featured such notable artists as Afaa Michael Weaver, Ed Roberson, Martha Collins, Willie Perdomo, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Tony Medina, among others. Through its publishing efforts, TBR provides a space for high-quality, interdisciplinary expressions of the creative arts to be showcased for the world and has gone on to publish beautiful, brave voices from every corner of the United States. Selecting poems and prose often times knowing very little about the writer, the table of contents and biographies proved to be as varied as the many people that call themselves American: hyphens welcomed and celebrated.