Welcome...


Welcome to the Folio Club, the online home of Robert Pranzatelli's writing and related literary endeavors. 
I'm a writer of fiction, poems, and nonfiction, and the author of a book about the dance theatre company Pilobolus. A number of my essays have been published by the Paris Review and other literary journals. I'm also the founder of the indie publishing project The Folio Club, for which this site is named, and I'm a longtime staff member of Yale University Press.
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Pilobolus: A Story of Dance and Life

For more than fifty years, the brilliant dance theatre company Pilobolus has elicited extraordinary interest from arts writers, critics, and journalists, but its full story has never been told until now. 

Pilobolus: A Story of Dance and Life is a dynamic, independently written, behind-the-scenes account of how Pilobolus has helped redefine, remix, and rejuvenate the essence of dance. Written with unprecedented access and featuring both classic and never-before-seen photos, the book offers revelatory details about the company, from its counterculture origins through its pop-culture triumphs and contemporary global acclaim, with insights into the creation of its most significant works. It's a narrative of life and art, and the vitality that infuses and inspires both when they align and inhabit each other.

Pilobolus: A Story of Dance and Life will be published by University Press of Florida in April 2024. The cover features an image by the great longtime Pilobolus photographer John Kane.


"Sometimes when you explain how a magic trick works, it kills the amazement. This book proves the opposite. When Pranzatelli takes you backstage, he leads you Dante-like through the Inferno/mystery of Pilobolus. And you willas I dolove, love, love these people who fearlessly flex their hearts with their muscles, and fill their stage with beauty, humor, sex, and joy."
Teller (of Penn & Teller), magician and director

"What a joyful, engaging chronicle of creativity. With skillful prose and miles of heart, Pranzatelli captures the wit, sensuality, and daring of Pilobolus, the group that blew up dance theatre and keeps making discoveries after more than 50 years." 
Sarah L. Kaufman, Pulitzer Prize-winning dance critic,
author of The Art of Grace: On Moving Well Through Life

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My Semi-Secret Life as a Writer of Fiction


This fabulous drawing by the artist Onsmith is featured, in two variations (one with green background and the other blue), on my pair of privately printed books Self-Creation and the Influence of Dreams (a collection of stories) and Envoy in Blue (a novel). I will have more to say about these two books in the future, but for now anyone who wants to sample my fiction can do so using the links below or by checking out my e-book String Quartet, which is available from most online booksellers.
Short stories available to read here:
String Quartet 
The Museum Café
Préludes (in French)

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Selected essays available online:

Paris Review essays
La Couture Comique (on Belle Époque artist Lucien Métivet)
Les Combats Modernes (on Métivet's World War One cartoons)
Moebius and the Key of Dreams (on French comics artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud)
Max de Radiguès and the Difficult Age (on the contemporary Belgian graphic novelist)
Visual Magicians in the Hills of Connecticut (on John Kane's photography of Pilobolus and Momix)

Essays on literature and the arts
On Poetic Prose (from Yale Italian Poetry)
On Nabokov's Definition of Art (from The Nabokovian)
Hergé & Tintin: An Appreciation
A Day in New York (on Andy Warhol)
The Triumph of Comedy (on Oscar Wilde)
Virginia Woolf
Mark Twain
Tolstoy
Elizabeth Bishop
Revisiting E. M. Forster
Scaling Mount Proust
Luc Métivet

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Image by Onsmith.

All original materials on this site, including my writings and original photography, as well as the images by the artist Onsmith created for the Folio Club, are copyrighted material. All rights reserved.


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