Elena Passarello

Profile

Elena Passarello’s essays on performance, pop culture, and the natural world have most recently appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s, Paris Review, and Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018. She is the author of two collections, Let Me Clear My Throat and Animals Strike Curious Poses, which made the Best Books of 2017 lists by the New York Times Book Review, the Guardian, and Publisher’s Weekly.

Elena is the recipient of the Whiting Award and the Oregon Book Award, and her work has been translated into German, Italian, French, Hebrew, and Chinese. She served as the 2018 New Harmony Writer-in-Residence and has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Hambidge Center, the Willapa Bay residencies, and the University of Iowa Museum of Art. Elena is a faculty member of Oregon State University’s MFA program, the co-editor of the In Place nonfiction book series, and a board member for Nonfiction Now, the largest international conference on the genre. She appears weekly on Public Radio International’s variety and culture show, LiveWire!