Welcome to Curbside Splendor

"Where the bright and morning faces of old familiar friends now wear the anxious midnight eyes of strangers a long way from home." - Nelson Algren 

We publish books.  We publish fiction, poetry, and art online at our Curbside section on a monthly basis.  See our submission guidelines.  

We like to make reading videos.  Visit our YouTube channel.  Now showing:

 

Press:

Chicago Tribune  Newcity Lit  Orange Alert  TNBBC  Chicago Publishes  Another Chicago Magazine Gozamos CAR TBWCYL DOGZPLOT Huffington Post Timeout Chicago Columbia Chronicle  Chicago Tribune Piano Rats Review  Rick Kogan Radio Show The Nervous Breakdown  CBS News  Newcity Lit

 

Coming out April 2012! Available for pre-order now!:

Chicago Stories cover by Rob Funderburk

"An absurdist Chi-town Spoon River Anthology on crack, Mike Czyzniejewski's Chicago Stories is an explosion of imagination, a relentless churn of intellect and wit. In true Chicago style, this book tells it straight to your face and pulls no punches. Chicago Stories is easily the most fun I've had reading in quite some time."

— Alan Heathcock, author of VOLT

"Mike Czyzniejewski's Chicago Stories reads at once as scatting celebration of the moral landscape that stretches across the country's midsection, and as a travelogue. Czyzniejewski's sharp wit and peering eye trek along that crooked road between the dead president & crony highways and the murky river, crossing tracks where trains haven't run in two score – before boring down past the jukejoints sidled against public houses, and corner hustlers hawking whores to blue pickpockets and last migrants on the run, down where they all keep score in shadow votes. The author brings it home early and often here as, along with so much more, he is a sojourner."

— Bayo Ojikutu, author of Free Burning

"In Chicago Stories, Michael Czyzniejewski channels Studs Terkel's Division Street, the voices so singular and complete that in the end you feel as though you've listened to each story rather than read them. Rob Funderburk's illustrations are a snapshot of movement; in their messy, deliberate lines each voice comes alive. Chicago buffs: if you like architecture, that is, if you like outsides, the riverboat tour will do. But if you're looking to go inside for a deeper look, Czyzniejewski's book will take you there."

—Lindsay Hunter, author of Daddy's

 

Now available: 

"Sometimes I run across a poem that makes me second guess my opinion on poetry. It could be a line in the poem that impresses me. Or a person in the poem that makes me wonder what he'd be like in another situation. Or a relationship that makes me want to know if it worked out. Or a memory I have while reading the poem. For me, Piano Rats by Franki Elliot had all of the above."

~Shamontiel L. Vaughn, Chicago Tribune.

"The book is a collection of deeply personal pieces, arranged as free verse poems, though Elliot calls them “stories.” And they do read as stories, the kind told around a kitchen table—or even, in the case of “Nothing,” a recounting of a story that happened while a story was being told around a kitchen table. Most of them detail a down-and-out cast with unbroken spirits, people who predict early deaths but live as if they don’t believe it."

~Jonathan Messinger, books editor of Timeout Chicago.

"The 44 pieces in Franki Elliott’s Piano Rats are like the best kind of chance meetings—weird and unsettling, specific and transformative. They are Frank O’Hara meets Ellen Kennedy,  “first kiss” meets “fuck off,” “hell” meets “rainstorm,” poetry meets prose, narrative meets lyric, trailer park meets city street. But they are also entirely themselves, places where you “remember who you wanted to be.””

~Kathleen Rooney, author of Oneiromance (an epithalamion), managing editor of Rose Metal Press