Over the course of the term, we’ll examine several examples of long-form nonfiction published within the past decade: memoir, book-length lyric essay, literary journalism, graphic nonfiction, cultural/ critical response. We will also read several short-form essays on crafting, structuring, and responding to contemporary nonfiction. Our goal in doing so will be to develop as a class a “map” of the places contemporary published nonfiction can go, answering several of the most frequent questions asked of and in response to nonfiction in this new millennium.
Elena Passarello
Assistant Professor of English
Oregon State University
Moreland 302
2550 SW Jefferson Way
Corvallis,
OR
97331 USA
Tel:
541-737-1673
Email contact form
Credentials
- MFA, University of Iowa, 2008
- BA, University of Pittsburgh, 2000
Research
Elena Passarello’s essays on pop culture, music, the performing arts, and the natural world have appeared in Slate, Creative Nonfiction, Normal School, Ninth Letter, and the Iowa Review, among other publications. Her debut nonfiction collection, Let Me Clear My Throat (Sarabande 2012), explores the human voice in popular performance, and she co-wrote a series of devised nonfiction monologues for the 2012 music writing anthology Pop When the World Falls Apart (Duke University Press). A recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts, and the University of Iowa Museum of Art, she received an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa and BAs in English and Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. Her website is www.elenapassarello.com.
Course Information
Available Summer Term
Creative Nonfiction: Essays Two Ways
What are the best ways to tell our stories—by using classic models, or by breaking new ground? This creative writing workshop offers the opportunity to study and write both traditional and experimental essays, memoirs, and multi-media nonfiction pieces. Students will select a core “true story,” and then draft, workshop and revise that story two ways: first in a format that echoes the traditional American essayists (Annie Dillard, David Sedaris, Phillip Lopate), and then venturing into the world of our more experimental—or “lyric”—nonfiction writers (Eula Biss, John McPhee, David Foster Wallace).
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