The Booksmith is so excited to be welcoming Sarah Lyn Rogers to The Booksmith for Cosmic Tantrum on April 2nd at 7pm. She'll be joined by fellow writers and friends Sally Ashton, Sage Curtis, Maggie Tokuda-Hall, Preeti Vangani, and Joe Wadlington! RSVP is not required, but appreciated. Seats are limited and can be guaranteed with the purchase of a book.

See you at the shop!

About the book

A debut full-length poetry collection from Sarah Lyn Rogers rewriting girlhood and summoning mischief

Sarah Lyn Rogers’s debut full-length collection is a tragicomic exploration of codependent and transactional relationships: economies of shame, gifts as debts, businesses run like families, and families run like businesses. What transgressions and abuses do we believe are acceptable fees for safety or love, and who upholds these myths?

The poems in Cosmic Tantrum examine how our most intimate relationships shape the way we move through the wider world—and what happens when we reject the stories we’ve inherited about our worth.

About the authors

Sarah Lyn Rogers is an NYC-based writer, editor, and tarot reader from Santa Clara. Her editing credits include books for Soft Skull Press, stories and personal essays for Catapult magazine, fiction for The Rumpus, and serving as series co-editor for the annual anthology Best Debut Short Stories: The PEN America Dau Prize. She is the author of the chapbooks Inevitable What (Sad Spell Press, 2016) and Autocorrect Suggests “Tithe” (Ghost City Press, 2021) and the Catapult column Internet as Intimacy. She was the 2014 winner of the Academy of American Poets' Virginia de Araujo Prize, as well as a finalist for the 2019 St. Lawrence Book Award. Her debut full-length collection, Cosmic Tantrum, is out now from Curbstone Books. For more Sarah, visit sarahlynrogers.com.

Former Santa Clara County Poet Laureate Sally Ashton is a writer, teacher, and editor in chief of DMQ Review, an online journal featuring poetry and art. Author of five books including most recently Listening to Mars, she specializes in brief forms across genres. One of her poems is archived on the Moon. www.sallyashton.com 

Sage Curtis is a San Jose–based writer and dancer who lives in a little yellow house and collects objects that gather dust and dog hair. She writes poems about being out in the world—except she doesn't go out much anymore—and repeated patterns of generational trauma. Her chapbook, Trashcan Funeral, was published in 2018, which feels like a lifetime ago and also yesterday.

​Maggie Tokuda-Hall is the author of Also an Octopus, illustrated by Benji Davies; The Mermaid, The Witch and The Sea; Squad, illustrated by Lisa Sterle; and Love in the Library, illustrated by Yas Imamura, with more books forthcoming. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband, son, daughter, and objectively perfect dog.

Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet and writer based in San Francisco. She is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (2019) and Fifty Mothers, forthcoming from River River Books (Feb 2026). Her work has been published in AGNI, The Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, and Prairie Schooner. among other places. Her debut short story won the 2021 Pen/Dau Emerging Writers Prize. She has received artist grants from San Francisco Arts Commission and YBCA through which she facilitates poetry workshops rooted in writing grief through joy. She holds an MFA in Writing from University of San Francisco and is currently working on a collection of short stories.

​In 2024, The San Francisco Chronicle described ​Joe Wadlington as​ "a Bon Vivant about town.” The next year, it described Joe's drag persona, Jubilee, as ​"Buxom,” lush,” and​ "wielding her lip like a boxing glove." These are not things he is saying about himself! These are things other people are saying and he's just telling you. Wadlington grew up in the Appalachian foothills but has been writing and high-kicking in the Bay for over a decade. He's been published in ​The New Yorker, Architectural Digest, Food & Wine Magazine, Vox, The San Francisco Chronicle, and ​The Rumpus! He's the co-producer/co-host of "Happy Endings," a monthly night of stories, poetry, and comedy. "Happy Endings" has been packing the Make Out Room with joyous new writing every second Tuesday of the month for the last six years. And has raised thousands of dollars for local writers. Wadlington and Rogers initially met at a smut competition held in a disreputable bookstore.

About the bookstore

The Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco since 1976.