It is hypocritical for me to insist that we have to know an animal’s history in order to validate it, since the idea of a historical narrative is decidedly human.

Elena Passarello’s column is about famous animals from history. This week: Geronimo the beaver takes flight.

Elena Passarello’s column is about famous animals from history. This week: two flamingos who escaped to the Gulf.

The saga of Springer the orca, an orphan rescued in 2001, is evidence of how fruitful difficult collaborations—of humans and whales—can be.

A column about famous animals from history. This week: Barry the Saint Bernard.

Zarafa the giraffe created a national sensation when she arrived in France in 1826 and walked the entire road from Marseilles to Paris.

Elena Passarello’s column is about famous animals from history. Design by Kristen Radtke.     Your tentacles are magical
They pick the winning team! …
You pick the winner
When you eat your dinner!
Paul the Octopus, we love you! —Fr…

The Daily’s newest correspondent is Elena Passarello, who will be writing about famous animals from history. This week’s beast is the silent-film star Tony the Wonder Horse.  Tom Mix and Tony at their best! Rip snortin’ action!—break neck horsema…

When a student who feels stuck on a writing project comes to see me, I often suggest they unsettle their form. Why not try pushing your story into a place it doesn’t belong? I ask. What if your family history could be, say, filtered into a life insurance claim? Can you rewrite this bad-date tale into thirty interconnected limericks? This is merely an exercise to move their narratives away from the classic arcs and tropes that often hold storytellers hostage. Rejecting prescribed forms helps us locate the impulses that require something weirder, I tell them, stroking my invisible beard. A few students end up doubling down on the ill-fitting forms and revising their projects around them, which creates another issue. That new form, I warn, can’t be a perfect fit. I encourage them to lean on the unlikely form until it almost breaks—until the demands of the original story nearly split it at its seams. Formal experiments buzz when they strain at both ends—at what the impulse really is and at whatever it’s trying to be. The tension created is the buzz of incompletion; that’s what makes the work both crafty and dangerous.