Animals Strike Curious Poses

Elena Passarello is an actor, writer and recipient of a 2015 Whiting Fellowship in non-fiction. Her first collection of essays, Let Me Clear My Throat, won the gold medal for nonfiction at the 2013 Independent Publisher Awards. Her essays on performance, pop culture and the natural world have appeared in Oxford American, Slate, Creative Nonfiction and the Iowa Review. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon.@elenavox

I’ve spent decades reading books on the roles animals play in human cultures, but none have ever made me think, and feel, as much as this one. It’s a devastating meditation on our relationship to the natural world. It might be the best book on animals I’ve ever read. It’s also the only one that’s made me laugh out loud.