Rain Taxi's mission is "to advance independent literary culture through publications and programs that foster awareness and appreciation of innovative writing."

[3] Rain Taxi has been relatively free of controversy and widely lauded for its role in bringing to light books which might not otherwise be reviewed.

[6] An exception to the lack of controversy was David Foster Wallace's Summer 2001 review of The Best of the Prose Poem: An International Journal (White Pine Press).

The review, which took the form of a bullet-pointed index that "broke down the anthology into numerical components", inflamed many of the book's contributors.

"[7] Rain Taxi focuses on literary fiction, poetry, and non-fiction with an emphasis on small press and offbeat books.

Authors have included Kees 't Hart, Alice Notley, Donald Revell, Dara Wier, Nathaniel Tarn, Paul Auster, Russell Edson, Anne Waldman and Rikki Ducornet (collaboration), Kai Nieminen, James Tate, Stephen Dixon, Paul Metcalf, and Clayton Eshleman.