Newsroom

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Essayist Elena Passarello will read at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 24, in the Valley Library Rotunda on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis. A question-and-answer session and book signing will follow.

Passarello is an assistant professor of English in OSU's School of Writing, Literature and Film. Her 2017 book, "Animals Strike Curious Poses," is a collection of essays about celebrity animals. Her previous book, "Let Me Clear My Throat," won the Independent Publishers' gold medal for nonfiction and was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. 

Her essays have also appeared in Oxford American, Creative Nonfiction, and the Virginia Quarterly Review, as well as in the anthologies "After Montaigne," "I'll Tell You Mine," and "Cat is Art Spelled Wrong."

Passarello is a recipient of fellowships from OSU's Center for the Humanities, Literary Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts, and the University of Iowa Museum of Art. In 2015, she received the Whiting Award in nonfiction. She earned her MFA at the University of Iowa. 

Passarello has also worked for many years as an actor and voice-over performer, and now serves on the board of the NonfictionNow conference, is the nonfiction editor of Iron Horse Review and co-edits the "In-Place" nonfiction series at West Virginia University Press.

This reading is part of the 2016-2017 Literary Northwest Series, which brings accomplished writers from the Pacific Northwest to OSU. The series is sponsored by the MFA Program in Creative Writing in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at OSU, with support from the OSU Libraries and Press, the School of Writing, Literature, and Film, the College of Liberal Arts, Kathy Brisker and Tim Steele, and Grass Roots Books and Music. 

The event is free and open to the public. The Valley Library is located at 201 S.W. Waldo Place, Corvallis.