This conversation aired in the May 12, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
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Leading up to Mother’s Day, KALW’s show Bay Made, our series that features local audio storytellers, has been airing episodes of the podcast “The Mother Of It All.”
The show dives into the different aspects about being a mother, with candid conversations about everything from pregnancy in the digital age, parenting trans children and even the cult of Dr. Becky.
The hosts Sarah Wheeler and Miranda Rake capped off their week-long run of episodes on KALW by hosting a live taping of their podcast at our San Francisco live event space at 220 Montgomery. For their guest, they brought Rachel Richardson, the co-founder of Left Margin Lit, a literary arts community in Berkeley and the author of the poetry book “Smother.”
In this excerpt, Richardson describes why she opens her book with a quote from J.D. McClatchy, the former editor of the Yale Review. McClatchy has written that he “automatically rejects any poem with the word mother in it."
To wrap up the live taping Richardson read a piece she wrote about a tree-planting she took her kids too after the 2013 Rim Fire, here is her poem “After Fire.”
Rachel Richardson will be speaking at the Bay Area Book Festival on May 30th.