Besmilr Brigham (1913-2000), raised by farmers in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, studied at an all women's Baptist college, married a linotype operator, Roy Brigham, with whom she raised a daughter, Heloise, and began writing seriously in Arkadelphia, Arkansas under the influence of John Gould Fletcher. She traveled alone by freighter in 1948 to charred Europe, of which she wrote her first novel, KATH: the wicked saint. Returning, she instilled in her family a frugal life of unconventional journeys and relentless writing. From 1950 to the late 70's they traveled by car to, and lived in, Nicaragua, Nova Scotia, Alaska, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico, returning to the U.S. to work. Brigham wrote prolifically, on her own terms, "putting away manuscripts," publishing nothing until the influential bilingual journal, El Corno Emplumado, requested her serial poem "Yaqui Deer" in 1966, followed by a decade of concentrated publishing efforts and solicitation. In 1972 Alfred A. Knopf published heaved from the earth, a collection of poems she had worked on for 20 years. The final decades of Brigham's life were of isolated yet conclusive labor over her life's writings in rural Arkansas. Lost Roads Press releaded Run Through Rock, a volume of her short poems selected and edited by C.D. Wright, in 2000, shortly after her death.