Trade War Shuts Down Lost River Press

Lost River Press, the independent publisher helmed by former Paris Review editor Nicole Rudick, announced last week that it will be closing its doors. In a statement posted to Instagram, the publisher said that “conditions from the trade war have forced us to shut down Lost River Press.”

In a May 23 statement, Rudick, who served as editorial director, attributed the closure to the White House’s ongoing trade war with China, which she said prevented a key Chinese investor from “fulfilling its commitments” to the press.

Lost River’s first title would have been Brais Lamela’s What Remains, an acclaimed Galician novel translated into English by Jacob Rogers, which was slated for a June 3 release, followed by Redirection, a debut novel by Nicole White, later this summer. Lost River’s catalog also showcases fiction, nonfiction, translations, and story collections from a handful of other indie publishers, including Transit and Deep Vellum. The press was founded in 2024, according to CLMP’s directory of publishers.

“We have investigated multiple solutions to honoring our publication dates and continuing the press in some other form or fashion, but none is feasible,” Rudick said, but declined to comment further on what would happen to their authors’ publishing rights or any other logistics of the closure.