Elena Passarello
Elena Passarello is an American writer, actor, and professor. In 2018, she became the announcer for the PRI variety show and podcast "Live Wire" with Luke Burbank. Career. Originally from Charleston, South Carolina, Passarello studied nonfiction at the University of Pittsburgh and The Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Her essays have been published in newspapers including "The New York Times" and national literary journals such as "Virginia Quarterly Review", "Gulf Coast", "Slate, Iowa Review," and "Oxford American." She is the recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award in nonfiction. Her first essay collection, "Let Me Clear  My Throat", was published by Sarabande in 2012 and received the gold medal for nonfiction at the 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards. In the book, Passarello writes about famous voices from cultural history, including the eighteenth-century castrato Farinelli, punk rock crows, impressionists, the rebel yell, the Wilhelm Scream, the Howard "Dean Scream," Pittsburgh sportscaster Myron Cope's "Yoy!", and Marlon Brando's "Stella!" from "A Streetcar Named Desire". Passarello was the first woman to win the Stella Screaming Contest in New Orleans in 2011. The book's title comes from DJ Kool's 1996 hip-hop song. Passarello's  second collection, "Animals Strike Curious Poses" (Sarabande 2017), is a bestiary of famous animals. From Jeoffry the Cat to Koko the Gorilla to Dürer's Rhinoceros, these essays are as much about the animals as the humans who named and interact with them. The book's title comes from Prince's 1984 single "When Doves Cry." The book received favorable reviews from "The New York Times", "Publishers Weekly", "Booklist", and "The Guardian". It was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of 2017 and in "The Guardian" and Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2017. In May 2018, it  received the Oregon Book Award. The book has been translated into German, Italian, and Chinese. Her essays have also appeared in several anthologies, including "The Best American Science and Nature Writing", "Pop When the World Falls Apart" (Duke University Press), "I'll Tell You Mine: Thirty Years of Essays from the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program" (University of Chicago Press), "After Montaigne: Essayists Cover the Essays" (University of Georgia Press), and "How We Speak to One Another", "Cat is Art Spelled Wrong", and "Little Boxes: Twelve Writers on Television" (all Coffee House Press). She co-edits the In Place Reading Series  for West Virginia University Press and edits nonfiction for "Iron Horse Literary Review" at Texas Tech University. Passarello also has credits as a performer, having originated roles in plays by David Turkel ("Wild Signs", "Holler") and Christopher Durang ("Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge"), as well as several voice-over credits. She is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA program at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon.