At the Edge: Women, California, and the Unknown

California is a place where beauty and danger are never far apart—where the air itself can turn to smoke, and the horizon can change with the tide. These two volumes of poetry arise from that tension, carrying both the shimmer of wonder and the weight of survival.

Join us at Clio’s for an evening with Cate Lycurgus (Seacliff) and Rachel Richardson (Smother), in conversation with Cari Borja. Both poets write from the edge—of the Bay, of an era, of endurance itself. In Smother, Richardson confronts the smoke-filled years of California’s wildfires, motherhood under climate change, and the strange intimacy of technological upheaval. In Seacliff, Lycurgus weaves the Pacific’s shifting shorelines with the relentless waves of disability, chronic illness, and awe. Together, they invite us to face both terror and wonder without turning away.

Cate Lycurgus’s writing has appeared in Best American Poetry, ZYZZYVA, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Orion, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences, and 2nd place in Narrative's 2022 Poetry Contest. Her chapbook Seacliff is forthcoming from Bull City Press in 2025. Cate lives in San Jose, California where she interviews for 32 Poems and teaches writing.

Rachel Richardson is the author of Smother (W. W. Norton & Co., 2025) and two earlier poetry collections, Copperhead and Hundred-Year Wave (both from Carnegie Mellon University Press). She is the co-founder of the literary arts center Left Margin LIT in Berkeley, as well as a former Wallace Stegner and NEA Fellow. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. In 2024 she was named an inaugural Artists-in-Fire Resident through the Confluence Lab, and is now trained as an FFT2 wildland firefighter.

Cate and Rachel will be in conversation with anthropologist, salonniere, and educator Cari Borja, who also serves as Senior Advisor to Alice Waters. Cari is a founding member of Clio’s.

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