#ArtLitPhx: A Reading with Elena Passarello

 

Author, essayist, and actress Elena Passarello reads from her collection of essays Animals Strike Curious Poses on Friday, March 16th, 2018 on the back patio of the Piper Writers House (450 E Tyler Mall, Tempe, AZ 85281) at 7:00 p.m. An informal Q&A and book signing will follow the reading. This event is free and open to the public. RSVP here.

About the Book:

Beginning with Yuka, a 39,000-year-old mummified woolly mammoth recently found in the Siberian permafrost, each of these sixteen essays investigates a different famous animal named and immortalized by humans. Modeled loosely after a medieval bestiary, these essays traverse history, myth, science, and more, bringing each beast vibrantly to life.

For more information on Animals Strike Curious Poses, visit the publisher’s website or order it from your local independent bookstore.

About the Author: 

Elena Passarello is an actor, writer, and recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award. Her first collection Let Me Clear My Throat (Sarabande, 2012), won the gold medal for nonfiction at the 2013 Independent Publisher Awards and was a finalist for the 2014 Oregon Book Award. Her essays on performance, pop culture, and the natural world have been published in Oxford American, Slate, Creative Nonfiction, and The Iowa Review, among other publications, as well as in the 2015 anthologies Cat is Art Spelled Wrong and After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essay.

Passarello has performed in several regional theaters in the East and Midwest, originating roles in the premieres of Christopher Durang’s Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge and David Turkel’s Wild Signs and Holler. In 2011, she became the first woman winner of the annual Stella Screaming Contest in New Orleans. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon and teaches at Oregon State University.