Richard Taylor was the first author to be published by Gray Zeitz's Larkspur Press. Taylor's Bluegrass, a collection of poems, appeared in 1975, and in 1976, Larkspur Press came out with the poet's compilation of work by Kentucky children, Cloud Bumping. Their next combined effort came in 1998, with a second volume of Richard Taylor's poems, In the Country of Morning Calm. The year 2001 welcomed their most recent collaboration, Stone Eye, a notable achievement both in Kentucky literature and in the graphic arts.

Richard Taylor has enjoyed a rich career both as an author of essays, fiction, and poetry, and as a teacher of literature. As a graduate student at the University of Kentucky int the late 1960s, he met Gray Zeitz, Wendell Berry, Guy Davenport, Ed McClanahan, and others who have played an important role in Kentucky letters. He won an appointment to the faculty of Kentucky State University in Frankfort, where he was named Distinguished Professor in 1992. He served as a dean in the Governor's Scholars Program for outstanding high school students, received two creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, an Al Smith Fellowship in Creative Writing from the Kentucky Arts Council, and a Fulbright Scholarship to Denmark. He was named Poet Laureate of Kentucky for 1999-2000. He and his wife live in Frankfort, Kentucky and own Poor Richard's Books.