about us

In 1997, the Tangent, a zine of politics and the arts was conceived over a few Rainier Pounders at Dot's Cafe in Portland, Oregon. Max Boykoff suggested naming the zine after a tangent, so it could spin off in myriad directions.

The first issue was created in an all-night session on SE Tenth Avenue in Portland, Oregon, by Max Boykoff, Jules Boykoff, Jenny Brinkley, Joseph Neal Sand and Kaia Sand. Just before dawn, we photocopied the inaugural issue, and just after dawn, Jenny Brinkley disappeared into the streets of Portland, and we've never seen her since (Jenny, where are you?). It was in the first issue that Joseph Neal Sand, under his various aliases, launched his "Jobs from Hell" column, and in Issue #3, his "Film Geek" column. Another popular column was Jeff Betts's "Rose City Thug," which ran through issue #5. Tina Patricelli Betts collaged the first cover.

Issue #2 featured guest editors Chris "Fuzz" Foster and Donald "Dixie" Gramenz, who were wintering in Portland from Minneapolis. They joined Jules, Kaia, and Neal, while Max Boykoff worked as the foreign correspondent based in Southern Honduras for the next couple issues. Erika Weaver began designing the Tangent covers at this point, and now her artwork is a cornerstone of the Tangent.

Fuzz and Dixie returned to the Twin Cities, and that's when Jeff McAlpine and Erika Petersen joined the editing crew for Issue #3. With Issue #4, the editorship stablized into the core four (Jules, Kaia, Max, and Neal), and has remained the same since, although at this point the Tangent relocated its homebase to Washington, DC. The first poems in the Tangent history were published in Issue #4 by the authors Jeff Male, Carol Mirakove, and Mel Nichols.

We launched our Pamphlet series during the presidential election in 2000, when Susana Gardner lined up an interview with Green Party Vice Presidential Candidate Winona LaDuke. The pamphlet seemed the perfect form for the Tangent, because its content and use could also spin off in myriad directions. The first play published as a pamphlet was Tina Darragh's Opposable Dumbs in 2002. With the publication of Dan Gutstein's Craft & Edge Primer in 2003, we've begun to publish chapbooks.

The Tangent was located in Washington DC and Southern Maryland through issue 14, which was a special New York City issue, published collaboratively with Boog Publications. Beginning with issue 15, the Tangent is published from Walla Walla, Washington, where we also have begun to broadcast tangentradio.

The word "tangent" derives from "touch"; mathematically, a tangent is a line that touches a circle at one point. To seem tangential is to seem unfocused. For instance, activists are often accused of representing "too many issues." This seeming lack of cohesiveness frustrates those who want to sum up movements into a Movement. Through our publications, we've celebrated the arrow-like force of tangents, confident that this is how we can touch the circles, the sources. We are interested in tangents that catapult us toward cogent complexity in both politics and art.