BlazeVOX Celebrates Two Finalists for the 2024 Big Other Readers’ Choice Award!
We are thrilled to share some wonderful news: two of our titles have been honored as finalists for the 2024 Big Other Readers’ Choice Award! This is a tremendous recognition not only of the individual brilliance of these books but also of the spirit of adventurous publishing that drives BlazeVOX forward.
Please join us in celebrating:
🏆 David Trinidad’s Sleeping with Bashō – Finalist
✨ Tony Trigilio’s The Punishment Book: The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood), Book 4 – Honorable Mention
Each year, Big Other gathers recommendations from an incredible roster of writers and critics—including Jane Ciabattari, Terese Svoboda, David Naimon, and others—to highlight some of the most exciting and innovative literature being published today. We are honored to find two BlazeVOX books recognized among these singular works.
Sleeping with Bashō by David Trinidad
“David Trinidad meets Bashō for a moon-viewing party under a willow tree amid a flock of warbling cuckoos.” – Tony Trigilio
“Simply brilliant!” – Denise Duhamel
In Sleeping with Bashō, Trinidad crafts an electrifying poetic conversation across centuries, recasting the 17th-century haiku master into a pop-saturated dreamscape filled with Lite-Brites, B-52s, and the ghost of Green Acres. Trinidad's deep engagement with the form and history of haiku is filtered through his inimitable voice: meditative, irreverent, poignant, and endlessly surprising.
This book is a playful, haunting mashup of East and West, old and new, silence and song. It’s no exaggeration to say that Trinidad gives Bashō a new life—in a neon-lit, poetically complex present.
The Punishment Book: The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood), Book 4 by Tony Trigilio
“A preposterous Proustian epic of poly-simultaneity.” – Jack Skelley
“A radical act of attention… a tour de force.” – Jan Bottiglieri & John Gallaher
Tony Trigilio’s ambitious Dark Shadows series reaches new depths with Book 4, exploring the fraught and ghost-filled intersections of popular culture, personal memory, and emotional unraveling. In this volume, the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows mirrors the unraveling of the poet’s own marriage and a country on the cusp of chaos.
Blending poetry, prose, and diaristic fragments, Trigilio channels the undead into something utterly alive. It’s as intimate as it is strange, a gothic ekphrasis that doesn’t just revisit history—it vampirizes it. If you’re new to the series, this is a hauntingly perfect place to begin.
A BlazeVOX Moment
We are immensely proud of David and Tony—two longstanding BlazeVOX authors whose work has consistently redefined the edges of contemporary poetry and prose. Their presence among the finalists is a testament to the enduring power of innovative literature and the readers who champion it.
Big thanks to the editors, writers, and readers at Big Other for shining a spotlight on these daring, unforgettable books. We’ll be tuning in eagerly to the Big Other Book Awards Ceremony, which will be aired virtually (stay tuned for date and time).
Until then, we raise a glass to our authors and to the readers who help make this kind of recognition possible.
HURRAY!
—The BlazeVOX Team
