Lost Roads Publishing Company

Frank Stanford began laying the foundation for Lost Roads Publishing Company (also known as Lost Roads Press and Lost Roads Publishers) in the mid-1970s. The independent poetry imprint that started in Fayetteville (Washington County) would release more than 120 titles and become an influential publisher of poetry and other literary works from diverse voices, with a special focus on the greater American South. Building on his close collaboration with author and publisher Irv Broughton, whose Mill Mountain Press published Stanford’s early chapbooks, Stanford worked closely with the poet C. D. Wright and other emerging poets in northwestern Arkansas to publish new and original works. Many of those initial authors and collaborators—the “Lost Roads Poets”—were affiliated with the University of Arkansas (UA) Creative Writing Program.

Part of a vibrant alternative culture movement and arts scene in Fayetteville, Lost Roads became the early publisher of several notable writers, including National Book Award winner Ellen Gilchrist, MacArthur Grant recipient Wright, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) fellow Ralph Adamo, Broughton, and Stanford himself, whose 15,434-line book-length poem The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, edited and prepared for printing by C. D. Wright, was posthumously co-published by Lost Roads and Mill Mountain Press. One impetus for Stanford to found his own press may have been his realization that no other publisher would take on that monumental work of his.

Although documents related to the press indicate Rogers (Benton County) and other locations as its base as early as 1976, and printing and typesetting happened in various places throughout the northwestern Arkansas area, the imprint listed Fayetteville as the location of publication until 1980. The first Lost Roads title was Wright’s Room Rented by a Single Woman, published in 1977. Much of the production of the press happened in the house on Jackson Drive in Fayetteville that Wright rented, and sometimes shared, with Stanford.

Stanford sought to help release the work of unheralded and unique voices he admired, including his eccentric friend John Stoss, whose first book, Finding the Broom, became the second Lost Roads book, and who Stanford also wrote about in his own book, You (Lost Roads number 15).

Stanford and Wright labored together on the editing and production of each of the first six titles until Stanford’s death in 1978. The first advertisements for Lost Roads books appeared in the feminist newspaper Hard Labor, collectively published just off Fayetteville’s Dickson Street in a shared workspace. Wright also worked closely with local alternative newspaper the Grapevine, headquartered on Lafayette Street in Fayetteville. Many Grapevine staff such as Peter Tooker and Joe Neal continued to support her and the press’s work after Lost Roads left Fayetteville.

The press’s editorial choices, before and after Stanford’s death, sometimes created controversy. Stanford and Wright received hundreds of submissions, and local friends and colleagues were disappointed when their work was rejected; at the same time, some established and promising poets Stanford hoped would join in the venture took manuscripts elsewhere. Ellen Gilchrist almost immediately published a revised second edition of her book Land Surveyor’s Daughter (Lost Roads number 14 in 1979, New Orleans second edition in 1980) because of strong disagreement with Wright’s editorial decisions.

The early Lost Roads books exhibit a characteristic simple aesthetic with black and red borders on plain white paper bindings, usually with single, evocative images reproduced on the front covers. The titles also included numbers that indicated where they were in the chronological order of printing. Stanford described his intention for the press while soliciting a contribution from his friend Alan Dugan in early 1976: “Each book is self-contained, titled work by one author, perfectly bound, printed on 75 weight text, about 500 copies.” (Perfect-bound books are bound using glue instead of having a sewn binding.) Stanford’s The Battlefield, copublished with Mill Mountain Press, appeared as Lost Roads numbers 7–12.

Although visually cohesive, the early Lost Roads books were not especially high quality in construction. After Stanford’s death and Wright’s departure from Fayetteville, unsold or undistributed copies of Lost Roads books were stored at the headquarters of the Grapevine. Books that would achieve legendary status among poetry critics and collectors such as Stanford’s The Battlefield remained in large, warehoused quantities—of the 1,500 copies of The Battlefield initially left in Fayetteville, as many as 500, along with some other titles, were later damaged in a flood in the Grapevine storage area.

The first Lost Roads books all employed the simple “true binding” preferred by Stanford, although the manufacturing, relying on local firms, could be inconsistent. Early copies sometimes became unglued. However, the quality of the poetry and the unique collaboration of authors and publishers creating the works have made each of the Fayetteville-published titles highly sought after by collectors and considered significant additions to private, public, and academic libraries.

Stanford’s name for his press was a phrase that appeared in his poetry. C. D. Wright would also borrow the phrase for her major anthology project documenting Arkansas literary contributions that resulted in a touring exhibit; documentary video and oral histories (now housed at Yale University’s Beinecke Library); a limited-edition set of letter press broadsides with custom engravings and the Reader’s Map of Arkansas, both designed by artist Walter Feldman; and a book published by the University of Arkansas Press in 1994, The Lost Roads Project: A Walk-In Book of Arkansas, edited by Wright with photography by another northwestern Arkansas collaborator, Deb Luster.

The first eighteen Lost Roads books published in Fayetteville, first by Frank Stanford and then under the editorial guidance of C. D. Wright, are:

• C. D. Wright, Room Rented by a Single Woman: Poems. Lost Roads Pub. Co., 1977. Number 1.
• John Stoss, Finding the Broom: Poems. Lost Roads Pub. Co., 1977. Number 2.
• Ralph Adamo, Sadness at the Private University: Poems. Lost Roads Pub. Co., 1977. Number 3.
• John S. Morris, Bean Street: Poems. Lost Roads Pub. Co., 1977. Number 4.
• John McKernan, Walking along the Missouri River: Poems. Lost Roads Pub. Co., 1977. Number 5.
• Irv Broughton, The Blessing of the Fleet: Poems. Lost Roads Pub. Co., 1977. Number 6.
• Frank Stanford and Ginny Stanford, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You: A Poem. Lost Roads Pub. Co., 1977. Numbers 7–12.
• C. D. Wright, Terrorism: Poems. Lost Roads Pub. Co., 1979. Number 13.
• Ellen Gilchrist, The Land Surveyor’s Daughter: Poems. Lost Roads Pub. Co., 1979. Number 14.
• Frank Stanford, You: Poems. Lost Roads Pub. Co., 1979. Number 15.
• Justin Caldwell, The Sleeping Porch: Poems. Lost Roads Pub. Co., 1979. Number 16.
• Ralph Adamo, The End of the World: Poems. Lost Roads Pub. Co., 1979. Number 17.
• Frank Stanford, The Singing Knives: Poems. A new limited edition. Illustrated by David Hurley. Lost Roads Publishing Company, 1979. Number 18.

Lost Roads Publishers moved with C. D. Wright as she pursued career and personal changes, first to San Francisco. Trouble in Paradise: Narrative Images in Pencil by Zuleyka Benitez, published in Berkeley, California, in 1980, appeared as Lost Roads number 19. Wright began co-editing the press with her husband, Forrest Gander, while still in the Bay Area. Lost Roads later moved with Wright and Gander to Rhode Island, where Wright joined the faculty of Brown University. Nearly 100 titles have appeared under the Lost Roads imprint since Wright moved the press from Arkansas, expanded to include works of translations, songs, and story collections.

Wright and Gander utilized Lost Roads to bring greater attention to unheralded poets, such as besmilr brigham of Horatio (Sevier County), as well as to continue promoting the legacy of Frank Stanford. Brigham and Stanford were both prominently featured in The Lost Roads Project. Wright edited Run through Rock: Selected Short Poems of Besmilr Brigham (Barrington, Rhode Island, 2000), providing crucial background and contextualization for the obscure Arkansas poet. That same year, Wright and Gander published a second Lost Roads edition of Stanford’s The Battlefield, later releasing new editions of Stanford’s The Singing Knives and You. In 2007, Wright and Gander began the process of depositing the press’s archives at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. The papers of Stanford and Wright, who died in 2016, also reside together with the Lost Roads Publishers Records at Yale.

Susan Scarlata became executive editor of Lost Roads in 2009. Lost Roads next moved to Jackson, Wyoming. In 2024, the Foundlings Press, which had released previously unpublished Stanford work, announced that it had begun managing and making available the Lost Roads back catalog.

For additional information:
Alan Dugan Papers, Emory University Libraries. https://archives.libraries.emory.edu/repositories/7/resources/2641 (accessed June 12, 2026).

C. D. Wright Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Finding aid online at https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/resources/1820/collection_organization (accessed June 12, 2026).

Frank Stanford Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Finding aid online at https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/resources/1507 (accessed June 12, 2026).

“Lost Roads Press Back Catalog Now Available through Foundlings Press and Asterism.” Foundlings Press, November 13, 2024. https://www.foundlingspress.com/news/2024/11/13/lost-roads-press-back-catalog-now-available-through-foundlings-press-and-asterism (accessed June 12, 2026).

Lost Roads Publishers Records. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Finding aid online at https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/resources/1763 (accessed June 12, 2026).

McWilliams, James E. The Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2026.

Neal, Joe. “Frank Stanford: “‘It wasn’t a Dream; It was a Flood’.” The Grapevine, June 7, 1978.

Joshua Cobbs Youngblood
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville