Join us at Pebble Hill on Thursday, March 30 at 6 p.m. Elena Passarello will join us for The Third Thursday Poetry Series this month.
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. Passarello’s second collection, Animals Strike Curious Poses (Sarabande 2017), is a bestiary of famous animals. From Jeoffry the Cat to Koko the Gorilla, these essays are as much about the animals as the humans who named and interact with them. The book 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 and has been translated into German, Italian, and Chinese. 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 directs the MFA Program at Oregon State University.
About the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities
The Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in Auburn University’s College of Liberal Arts creates opportunities for people to explore our individual and collective experiences, values, and identities through the creativity of the arts and the wisdom of the humanities.
Based on the extension ideal of our land-grant institution, the Center was established by Auburn University in 1985 to develop and offer programming in Alabama schools, towns, and communities that strengthens the bond between the academic community, the arts and humanities, and the general public. The Center is located in the historic Scott-Yarbrough House, known as Pebble Hill, an 1847 Greek Revival style cottage that illustrates the important lives of Creek Indians, enslaved persons, and founders and builders of the town of Auburn.
Explore our website to learn about the opportunities we offer at the Center and around the state in partnership with organizations and individuals committed to the public purposes of the arts and humanities. Generations of Alabamians have benefited from the Center’s public programs since our founding, and thousands of visitors and program attendees each year enjoy conferences, workshops, lifelong learning classes, field trips, writing retreats, and other opportunities to reflect on the human experience in an environment that inspires and instructs.