Elena Passarello tends to her exploding email inbox daily and wrestles with various office-forward documents (spreadsheets, Doodle Polls, video software) that she only pretends to understand. Luckily, the other half of her job involves working with writers on their burgeoning projects and being a classroom evangelist for the power of Literary Nonfiction, so at least she's got that going for her. Before being hired as an exploding email wrangler—er, professor—she slung coffee, couriered for a travel agency, and acted in low-budget children's plays throughout the American Rust Belt.

Moonlighting Jobs

I think (hope?) I am the only writer who has supplemented her writing life by appearing in dozens of K-8 classrooms as "Rappin' Rachel Carson." From 2003-2005, I toured a one-person-show for kids about the famed environmentalist, who, for the record, was not a practitioner of the hip-hop arts. But the children's theater company I worked for thought it would be cool to have the notoriously nerdy Carson change into a green catsuit decorated with iron-on manatees and spit bars about fossil fuels...ya know, for the kids!

When did you feel you “made it”?

I'm on my third book now and I feel just as lost, if not more so, than I did with books one and two. I assumed it would be more assured a process once I had a book under my belt. The only difference is that, at the lowest point of the book making process, I now have hard evidence that I DID once make it through, and that does give me a modicum of comfort/confidence. Said confidence is the closest feeling I possess to "making it."

What were some of your biggest challenges along your writing/publishing path?

Learning how to really hear feedback and then apply it to a project while still keeping the project in my own lane.

What advice would you give to writers/artists today who are "moonlighting" in order to support their art?

Don't compare yourselves to other writers, especially their timelines to what you currently perceive as "success." Writing isn't like ballet or football—you have your whole life to keep doing it, to keep experiencing it. Take your time, find your people, and develop a relationship to writing that lives outside of temporal/public expectations.

Elena Passarello is the author of two essay collections: Let Me Clear My Throat and Animals Strike Curious Poses, both with Sarabande Books. Her essays on performance, pop culture, and the natural world have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Audubon, Paris Review, McSweeney's and Oxford American, among other publications. She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Oregon State University, where she currently directs the MFA program.

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