He is the author of Party of Black (2006), A Day of Presence (2008), Bottle of Life (2010), Speak Water (2012), winner of the 2013 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Poetry,[1] and My TV is Not the Boss of Me (2013), Jessie Redmon Fauset Book Award Finalist 2014,[2] a children's book, illustrated by Cory Thomas.

In the late 1960s, after his family moved to the Washington Metropolitan Area, he spent much of his musical youth at Rock Creek Baptist Church on 8th and Upshur Streets, NW.

Among his Washington, D.C. music mentors were drummer Michael L. Johnson and vocalist/percussionist Bobby Thurston[12] of the band, Spectrum, Ltd. Thomas attended Montgomery Blair High School.

After living and working in Los Angeles and London for many years, Thomas returned to the Washington Metropolitan Area in the early 2000s, where he began the formal study of poetry.

Regarding his aesthetic, Dr. Randall Horton writes, "Truth Thomas' genius lies in his ability to take us places where we've never been before…"[14] His poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies such as: Poetry, Apogee Journal, The Scores Issue 9, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Callaloo, The Progressive, The Newtowner Magazine, Black Poets Lean South (Cave Canem Anthology) and The 100 Best African American Poems (edited by Nikki Giovanni).

In 2010, he co-founded the Washington, D.C. based literary journal, the Tidal Basin Review, along with poets Melanie Henderson, Dr. Randall Horton and Fred Joiner.