“Get in, get out. Don’t linger. Go on.” ―
Robert Scotellaro is the author of over a dozen books and chapbooks.
Here are his most recent collections of flash fiction:
God in a Can
(Bamboo Dart Press, 2022)
“God in a Can is a sharp, unpredictable story collection full of humor, absurdity, and colorful characters who remain doggedly hopeful for better times. Here gods and humans share center stage: Hell stops in at a roadside diner, a man grows a colossal flare of peacock feathers, sumo wrestlers offer a personalized heating service, couples outwit the schadenfreude police, cope with new body parts, and keep love alive in a world that has been tilted askew. With a poet’s eye, Scotellaro hones in on vivid details and those small, sudden moments of elation.”
—Frankie McMillian, author of The Father of Octopus Wrestling and My Mother and the Hungarians
“In Robert Scotellaro’s new collection, God in a Can, each brilliant flash/micro story is a “metaphor of the powder fine substance of the world” (Italo Calvino): A mime with a gun breaks into the home of a couple and plays charades with them; a waitress encounters Hell at one of her booths and serves it “scrams and extra crispy browns with a bucket of vice on the side”; in the title piece, with one spray of “God in the Can,” a man can restore his old cat’s youth and even make his ex-wife desire him, at least for a moment. Cloud walkers, wolves juggling beer bottles, extravagant poets who are also kidnappers—God in a Can unveils not only the absurdity, comedy and sadness of our lives but also the joy. Scotellaro writes the hell out of hell and heaven too!”
—Jeff Friedman, author of The Marksman and Floating Tales
Ways to Read the World
(Scantic Books, 2022)
“Ways to Read the World is another masterwork by a brilliant weaver of the compact tale. Robert Scotellaro’s ability to compress whole worlds into a few sentences is singular, profoundly entertaining, and illuminating. As with the author’s previous flash fiction collections, this new offering challenges the reader’s complacency and imagination—a sudden turn of phrase and the train is off its tracks and bound in unexpected directions. The innovative triptych format works to marvelous effect, expanding and enriching the themes and motifs of its luminous prosetry. Scotellaro’s artistry, wit, and insight are on exquisite display in this superb new volume. A triple delight and triumph.”
–– Michael C. Keith, author Insomnia 11 and Quiet Geography
“No one has a deeper and more playful literary imagination than Robert Scotellaro. The triptychs in Ways to Read the World conjure up vivid worlds that are sometimes humorous, sometimes unsettling and oftentimes both—but always, always, supremely entertaining.”
—Tom Hazuka, co-editor of Flash Fiction and Flash Nonfiction Funny
What Are the Chances?
(Press 53, 2020)
“Dip into What Are the Chances? for lightning-quick glimpses into the human soul: An eldercare worker with an uncanny ability to finish sentences, an alluring woman in a squid mask, a couple who make love in front of funhouse mirrors, skateboarders in an empty swimming pool…a hit man in retirement. Here are promises, anticipations, titillations, regrets.”
—Jane Ciabattari, BBC Culture, The Literary Hub
“In What Are The Chances? Robert Scotellaro offers us spelunkers and pot-smoking nuns and birthday party clowns… In a heartbeat, we spiral into lives both ordinary yet on the edge of change and danger, and over the course of just a few pages, he lays bare damaged hearts and offers connections as tenuous as they are tender… These stories are small, but they pack a heavyweight’s punch. Scotellaro is truly a master of the flash fiction form.”
—Curtis Smith, author of The Magpie’s Return
Nothing Is Ever One Thing
(Blue Light Press, 2019)
“Nothing Is Ever One Thing is a Master Class in flash fiction. These elegant stories shine a slanted light on the high wire act of human existence with a unique blend of pathos and grit. Robert Scotellaro’s microfictions are breathtaking little epiphanies.”
—Meg Pokrass, author of Damn Sure Right and Alligators at Night
“Nothing Is Ever One Thing is a perfect Scotellaro stew of geishas, bingo callers, stuntmen, and musical saw bands, sprinkled throughout with micro-fables and other tasty bits. The magic and beauty of chance are celebrated along with the various relationships we live in every day. Brilliant stories from the pen of a flash fiction master.”
—Francine Witte, author of The Way of the Wind and Dressed All Wrong for This
New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction
(W.W. Norton & Company, 2018)
“Reading these wonderful tiny fictions is like stealing food from the refrigerator before, or after, dinner. A sublime luxury.”
—Frederick Barthelme, New World Writing
“These micro fictions violate the laws of geophysics by compressing whole lives / whole worlds / whole heartbreaks into something like diamonds: bright, riven, reflective, edged, wonderful, and hard enough to cut through glass.”
—Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted
(Big Table Publishing, 2016)
“You can’t be complacent when you read Robert Scotellaro’s stories. He’s a master of the miniature tale, wielding concision like a sculptor’s knife… These 100-word stories are both barbed and beautiful.”
– Grant Faulkner
Author of Fissures and co-founder and editor of 100 Word Story
(Blue Light Press, 2015)
“Scotellaro’s flash stories, sentence by sentence, ride disjunction to dazzling heights of hilarity, hard won wisdom, and the sweetest grief. He is the sublime story teller of tiny lives colliding with big moments.”
– Pamela Painter
Author of Wouldn’t You Like to Know
and The Long and Short of It
(Blue Light Press, 2012)
“Every story in Measuring the Distance starts with a bang and never lets go of us. I read right through the book, led on from amazement to amazement.”