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.
