Brooklyn Poets Book Launch: Sarah Lyn Rogers

Join us for the launch of poet Sarah Lyn Rogers's debut collection of poems, Cosmic Tantrum, on Saturday, February 22 at 144 Montague Street and via Zoom! Doors will open to in-person guests for a wine reception at 6 PM and readings will begin at 6:30 PM. AngieDoe, Lauren Milici, Megan Pinto, Lena Moses-Schmitt and Leigh Stein will open for Rogers. Book signing to follow. Hats, crowns and masquerade masks are encouraged!

Note that by attending this event, you agree to abide by our code of conduct and COVID-19 policy. All in-person attendees for events are currently required to wear masks (regardless of vaccination status) except readers at a safe distance on stage. We will have masks available. Brooklyn Poets reserves the right to dismiss from our programs any participant found to be in violation of these policies. Thank you for respecting our community.

About Cosmic Tantrum

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 Author

Sarah Lyn Rogers is an NYC-based writer and editor from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her editing credits include books for Soft Skull Press, short 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 forthcoming from Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press.

About the Opening Acts

AngieDoe (she/her) is a writer and singer currently living in Harlem, New York City. She received her Master's in Creative Writing from the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. Working as a music curator for SoundCloud, Angie is driven by how words and lyrics can connect people from all different backgrounds and life experiences. Her poetry has been featured in the Quaranzine, Issue 8 by @hiaj on IG, Clover & White Magazine, and the CreativeMornings blog.

Lauren Milici is a Jersey-born, Florida-raised poet and writer. She is the author of Final Girl from Big Lucks Books and Sad Sexy Catholic from Clash Books. When she isn’t crafting sad poems about sex, she’s either writing or shouting into the void about film, TV, and all things pop culture.

Megan Pinto is the author of Saints of Little Faith, her debut collection, from Four Way Books. Her poems can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Ploughshares, Lit Hub and elsewhere. She has won the Anne Halley Prize from the Massachusetts Review and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers, as well as scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference and Storyknife. Megan lives in Brooklyn and holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson.

Lena Moses-Schmitt is a writer and artist. Her work has appeared in the Believer, Best New Poets, Ecotone, the Rumpus, Narrative, the Yale Review, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection True Mistakes was selected by Patricia Smith for the Miller Williams Poetry Series and is forthcoming from University of Arkansas Press in March 2025.

Leigh Stein is the author of six books, including the poetry collection What to Miss When, and the creator of the Attention Economy Substack.

COVID-19 Policy

Effective 2024, all event attendees are required to wear masks due to the current prevalence of cases in NYC. Masks will be available at the door.

The current metrics available, including NYC wastewater data and the CDC’s Respiratory Virus Activity Levels, both indicate high levels of COVID and other illnesses. While your personal risk tolerance may vary, the unmitigated spread of COVID and other respiratory illnesses disproportionately affects the most vulnerable in our community—including those who are immunocompromised or don’t have the privilege of paid sick days to heal and recover. We hope you’ll join us in taking the actions we can to make our space welcoming to all and to keep each other safe. Please stay home if you are experiencing symptoms, have a positive COVID test or someone close to you has recently tested positive.

We strongly encourage daytime visitors and workshop attendees to wear masks. Workshop instructors may choose to enforce a more stringent policy at their own discretion. Additionally, workshop participants may be required to wear masks as an accessibility accommodation for other participants.

While we do our best, Brooklyn Poets cannot guarantee zero risk. A risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in all public settings. By entering the building, students, teachers and other attendees accept the risk of exposure and knowingly waive and release Brooklyn Poets from any liability related to COVID-19.

Brooklyn Poets Code of Conduct

Brooklyn Poets will not tolerate any instances of discrimination, harassment or abuse in conjunction with any of our programs. Respect and consideration for others, both within and outside our programs, are core values to be upheld by all participants. Discrimination against and/or harassment of community members on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, national origin, religion, age, marital status, veteran status or any other factor is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Program participants are expected to adhere to all federal, state and local laws and regulations. Should a board or staff member, independent contractor, volunteer or program participant be found to violate any aspect of the organization’s code of conduct, Brooklyn Poets reserves the right to dismiss them from the program. Consequences may include, but not be limited to, dismissal from the current activity, suspension, ineligibility for all future activities, and/or loss of payment or fees. If you have any issues to report, please do not hesitate to contact anyone on our Conduct Committee and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Interim Director r kay: kay@brooklynpoets.org
Board Director Miller Oberman: miller.oberman@gmail.com