I Will Love You for the Rest of My Life: Breakup Stories

"Flexing impressive literary chops, the beer vendor/creative-writing professor captures both the tough, defensive exterior and the vulnerable, often-broken heart of his city."—Time Out Chicago, on Michael Czyzniejewski's Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions

"Chicago, a page at a time. Michael Czyzniejewski gets right to the point in telling the city's stories."—Chicago Tribune, on Michael Czyzniejewski's Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions

"In Chicago Stories, Michael Czyzniejewski summons all of Chicago—its ghosts, living and dead, its heroes and fools, sinners and saints, its people and places and all of its occasions—and in these pages they have gathered, strange and unlikely bedfellows, to sing a new song for Chicago."—Billy Lombardo, author of The Man With Two Arms

I Will Love You For the Rest of My Life: Breakup Stories explores the humor in throwing yourself into love and having your heart broken. An astronaut's husband cheats on her while she's deployed in space and blows his own cover, a couple becomes pregnant and the husband can't decide who to blame, a man exploits his peanut allergy for good sex.

Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of the story collections Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Fictions and Elephants in Our Bedroom and has been published in over seventy literary journals, including Another Chicago Magazine, Ninth Letter, Gulf Coast, the Southern Review, and StoryQuarterly. In 2010 he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for his fiction. A Chicago native, Czyzniejewski has sold beer at Wrigley Field every summer since 1988.

—Amelia Gray, author of THREATS

"There are stories that get you in the heart, and then there are stories that punch you in the kidneys. These manage to do both."

—Rebecca Makkai, author of The Hundred-Year House

"Not since Donald Barthelme have I read such an original and confident writer. Czyzniejewski creates beautiful literary riddles by colliding the amusingly banal with the intensely personal, like crashing meteors that create explosions of the urbane, profane and surreal. You'll read these brief stories too quickly, then go back and keep finding more."

—Arthur Nersesian, author of Gladyss of the Hunt

—Kirkus Reviews

"Sharp and funny, with reach and heart, these stories serve as an exhibit of the many ways love can get the hell out."

—Amelia Gray, author of THREATS

"Theres a strange and beautiful alchemy at work in these feverishly-funny and wicked shorts. The plots boom-a-rang nearly to the edge of the atmosphere and its because of Czyzniejewskis deep empathy for his characters that he brings us back, breathless and heart-struck. Its the crooked stick that makes the best nest. Youll love these stories for the rest of your life."

—Jason Ockert, author of Wasp Box

"These stories are perfect gems: polished for clarity, cut with precision by an expert hand so that they throw off light and color. Czyzniejewski is a funny, smart writer, crafting characters and situations with abundant wit and heart. A brilliant and entertaining collection—and one I'll be returning to again and again."

—Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

"There are stories that get you in the heart, and then there are stories that punch you in the kidneys. These manage to do both."

—Rebecca Makkai, author of The Hundred-Year House

"Not since Donald Barthelme have I read such an original and confident writer. Czyzniejewski creates beautiful literary riddles by colliding the amusingly banal with the intensely personal, like crashing meteors that create explosions of the urbane, profane and surreal. You'll read these brief stories too quickly, then go back and keep finding more."

—Arthur Nersesian, author of Gladyss of the Hunt

"Czyzniejewski is not afraid to test the limits of his stories. In a way the experience of reading this collection is like walking through the laboratory of a scientist, mad at work, trying to cure the abominable with wit and guile."

—Electric Literature