Elena Passarello
“What a gift to read essays that try to score the weird jokes into their accounts of human life, because that’s the way that life is.”
Elena Passarello
(c) Wendy Madar
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“I’ve spent decades reading books on the roles animals play in human cultures, but none have ever made me think, and feel, as much as this one. It’s a devastating meditation on our relationship to the natural world. It might be the best book on animals I’ve ever read. It’s also the only one that’s made me laugh out loud.”
“Passarello’s keen wit is on display throughout as she raises questions about the uniqueness of humans. Perhaps the most stunning work is her bricolage timeline of murderous elephants in America, which aligns their crimes and executions with the rise of electricity and capital punishment. The entire collection satisfies through a feast of surprising juxtapositions and gorgeous prose.”
“There is an agile intelligence at work . . . as [Passarello] makes connections among disparate elements and wields keen perceptions on the creatures she encounters. There are some real dazzlers. Passarello manages to chronicle humanity’s cavalier exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals without getting preachy in the process―no mean feat.”
“In this funny, visceral collection of essays, Passarello explores the ways our voices can entertain us, connect us, ruin us, vent our pains, and tether us to a place or tradition.”
Elena Passarello is an actor, writer, and recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award. She has published two acclaimed essay collections with Sarabande Books. The most recent, Animals Strike Curious Poses, has been translated into four languages and won the Oregon Book Award. It made the 2017 "Best Books" lists at Publisher’s Weekly, the Guardian, and the New York Times Magazine. In 2019, LitHub listed it among the best essay collections of the decade. Her debut collection Let Me Clear My Throat won the gold medal for nonfiction at the 2013 Independent Publisher Awards, and other essays on performance, pop culture, and the natural world were published in Oxford American, Paris Review, New York Times, National Geographic, and The Best American Science and Nature Writing. In 2018, Outside named her one of the "25 Essential Women Authors Writing About the Wild."
Passarello has performed in several regional theaters in the East and Midwest, originating roles in plays by David Turkel and Christopher Durang. She performed in Pop-Up Magazine's Spring 2022 US tour, and since 2018, she has appeared weekly on the nationally syndicated arts and culture PRX radio program LiveWire!
In an interview with Tin House, she was asked about the role research plays in her work: “It’s such a humbling experience to engage in an act of research. I also love the way that it allows me to sort of geek out and feel like I’m sharing new information, so there’s that selfish motivation. And I think it helps me express things without being personal, which is very important to me, because I rarely flex that personal muscle successfully. It’s not that I discount other people who do, but my engine doesn’t work in that way. I have all the same feelings and emotions as a personal essayist, and I do want to talk about life the way that people who write personally seem to want to talk about life, but my engine just isn’t in that kind of persona creation. In research, however, I think I can do similar work.”
Passarello lives in Corvallis, Oregon, where she is an Assistant Professor at Oregon State University.
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Elena Passarello
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Animals Strike Curious Poses
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Let Me Clear My Throat
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