BlazeVOX [books] Turns 25: A Silver Anniversary Celebration

Written By Geoffrey Gatza

On October 15, 2025, BlazeVOX [books] celebrates its Silver Anniversary—25 years of publishing the daring, the innovative, and the necessary. What began in 1999 as a humble student project at Daemen College has blossomed into a thriving independent press that has published hundreds of books and featured thousands of writers in its journals, anthologies, and events.

From the start, BlazeVOX has sought to amplify voices that might otherwise be overlooked, those working at the boundaries of poetry and prose, reimagining the literary landscape. Our first forays into online publishing and early print-on-demand titles paved the way for a bold catalog that includes both established luminaries like Anne Waldman, Bill Berkson, Clayton Eshleman, and Ron Silliman, as well as daring emerging writers just beginning to shape their careers.

This Silver Anniversary is not just about looking back, it’s about celebrating the community that has gathered around BlazeVOX. Writers, readers, artists, teachers, and friends have all contributed to making BlazeVOX a press rooted in Buffalo yet resonant across the world.

To honor this milestone, we invite you to join us for an evening of poetry and fellowship at one of Buffalo’s most vibrant gathering spaces:

📅 Tuesday, October 15, 2025
🕡 6:30–8:00 PM
📍 Gypsy Parlor, 376 Grant St, Buffalo, NY 14213

The celebration will open with a welcome and reflection on our journey so far, followed by a lively poetry reading and an open-mic session where invited poets will share a poem or two. Together, we will raise a toast to the past 25 years and set our sights on the future, one where BlazeVOX continues to publish groundbreaking work and foster literary community.

This evening is both a thank-you to all who have supported BlazeVOX over the years and a reaffirmation of our mission:

To amplify the voices of today’s most visionary writers, from celebrated senior poets to daring emerging talents. To cultivate cultural vitality, foster regional achievement, and curate a catalog that offers both continuity and space for experimentation. To publish the daring, the innovative, the necessary.

Here’s to a quarter-century of adventurous publishing—and to many more years ahead. Hurray for BlazeVOX [books]!

Geoffrey Gatza

Bio Note: Geoffrey Gatza is the author of the poetry collections The House of Forgetting (2012), Apollo: A Conceptual Poem (2014), and A Dog Lost in the Brick City of Outlawed Trees (2018).

 

Divya Victor, in an article for poetryfoundation.org, said of Apollo: A Conceptual Poem “The diversity of these works echoes the complexities of the subject, but together they posit something specific, the heightened relationship between the interior self and the exterior world.”

 

Gatza’s poems have been published in anthologies, as well as magazines and journals including Fence, Tarpaulin Sky, The Pickled Body, Peach Mag, Tupelo Quarterly and various others. His play on Marcel Duchamp was staged in an art installation in Philadelphia and performed in NYC.

 

Gatza is an award-winning editor, publisher and poet. He is the driving force behind BlazeVOX, an independent press located in Buffalo, NY, specializing in innovative fictions and wide ranging fields of contemporary poetry. Geoffrey Gatza is lives in Kenmore, NY.

editor@blazevox.org

http://www.blazevox.org

http://www.blazevox.org
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