About -
Cate Lycurgus
Bio
Cate Lycurgus is a writer and educator deeply invested in the ways language can spark discovery, create connection, and cultivate care. As a native Californian and long-term caregiver, Cate writes deeply sonic work, always in pursuit of light—paying close attention not only to what is dire, but the glimmer inside it.
She is the author of Seacliff (Bull City Press, 2025) and her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, ZYZZYVA, Kenyon Review, Orion, and elsewhere. Cate lives in San Jose, California, where she interviews for 32 Poems, co-curates the Headwaters Reading Series for Health and Wellbeing, and teaches writing
About the book
Anchored by a vivid and resounding sequence, Seacliff enacts the relentless crash and dissolution of our bodies, landscapes, and spirits, even as they are recombined to return. And so this book serves as a reminder of the primeval rhythm that sustains us. Unlike other works, this seascape impels a meditation that is not merely metaphorical. In the face of very real forces, the uncertainty is not whether one must surrender, but when and how. This testament of perseverance invites us to submit to – and to celebrate – the vast vigor of our planet. Here, alongside the Northern California coast, Seacliff offers a path, one lyric runner of shine, out to a fresh horizon.