About
I was born at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
I grew up in a time of social upheaval.
When artist’s didn’t hesitate to offend.
I went to London.
It was the dawning of a new era.
I have completed a novel, Age of Consent, about this period.
I went home.
We had a new president.
I went to New York.
My fiction is drawn from life, rather than other books.
My nonfiction explores the following experiences:
- Being a non-parent in a fertility-centric world.
2. Living with a stigmatized and invisible illness.
3. Working in a despised industry
I wrote of the dangers in the financial world long before the 2007 crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement.
“I’ve never seen the point in prettying up reality.”
I have also worked as a cleaning maid, in construction, and with the homeless and prison inmates.
I’ve learned that occupations separate people
just like geography, religion, and race.
I am the author of a full-length book of literary criticism, Great Women Writers, 1900-1950. My work has been internationally anthologized and appeared in The London Review of Books, Global City Review, River Oak Review, and myriad print and online journals, and recognized with numerous awards. I’ve won a NYFA fellowship and am a Pushcart nominee. My memoir on working for AIG, Elegy for an Organization, was first runner up in the 2009 Manhattan Media Contest.
I agree with Hanif Kureishi when he says:
“Writers should be terrorists, not masseurs.”
Below is a partial list of publications and activities:
Ask and It is Given, short story, Pif (July 2012).http://www.pifmagazine.com/2012/07/ask-and-it-is-given/
Flashback, short story/novel outtake, Blue Lake Review (June 2012). http://bluelakereview.weebly.com/flashback.html
The Black Box, story/THEFT novel excerpt, Rhode Island Writers CircleAnthology (2007).
Heartbreaker, novella, excerpted in winter/spring 2007 issue of online journal, R.K.V.R.Y.
http://ninetymeetingsinninetydays.com/Heartbreaker2.html
Literary Nonfiction:
Elegy for an Organization, first runner up, Manhattan Media Contest, NY Press, (September 2009).
http://nypress.com/elegy-for-an-organization/
(Memoir of working at AIG.)
Literary Editor, Exhale, online journal for women who’ve dealt with infertility, miscarriage or infant mortality. (2008-2009).
In the Company of Ghosts, memoir, Illness and Grace, Terror and Transformation, (anthology)Wising Up Press, (Fall 2007).
The Pink Dress , memoir, Honorable Mention, New Millennium Awards. (2007).(Memoir of working as a woman on Wall Street.)
War Zone, 7,000 word Wall Street 9/11 veteran’s memoir, Red Hen Press Nonfiction Award, (2002).
Also published in the anthology, The Fake City Syndrome , Red Hen Press,(2003).
First published in The London Review of Books, (November 2, 2011). Reprinted in Women’s Review of Books, and anthologized in Australia’s Spinifex Press’s September 11, 2001, Feminist Perspectives (2002).
Selected Book Reviews
An Interview with Seamus Scanlon, author of As Close As You’ll Ever Be, book review, Bookslut, (December 2012).
An Interview with Patrick Tracey, author of Stalking Irish Madness, Searching for the Roots of My Family’s Schizophrenia, book review, Bookslut, (October 2008).
Literary Editor, Exhale, online journal for women who’ve dealt with infertility, miscarriage or infant mortality. (2008-2009).
Everybody Knows, book review, The London Review of Books (June 22, 2002).
Everybody Knows, book review, The London Review of Books (June 22, 2002).
Consumer Journalism (selected, I’ve published hundreds of pieces in print and online from The New York Times as far back as 1989)
The Great Mother Divide, memoir/essay, The Huffington Post, Psychology Today.com, (September 2010).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-s-levine/guest-post—childlessnes_b_745125.html
(Memoir on how motherhood impacts friendships between women.)
Women and Children First, memoir/essay, WorkingWoman magazine, (February 1998).
Great Women Writers, 1900-1950, book, Facts On File, New York, NY (1996).
Full length book of biographical essays, introducing high school students to the life and work of authors from Edith Wharton to Flannery O’Connor.
Dancing from the Dream State, profile of Taiwanese dancer and choreographer, Yienan Song, Global City Review, (1995).
(Also served as consulting editor, slushpile reader.)
The End of the Reign of Queen Helen, memoir, For She is The Tree of Life, Women Writers on their Grandmothers, Conari Press, (1994).
I Was a Teenage Waif, memoir/essay, Scholastic Choices Magazine, (May 1993).
Grants and Awards
Goodman Fund Grant, City University of New York, nonfiction, (1993).
Geraldine Griffin Moore Prize, fiction, (1993).
New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, creative nonfiction, (1995).
Red Hen Nonfiction Award, memoir, (2003).
Honorable Mention, memoir, New Millennium Awards, (2007).
Manhattan Media Contest, memoir, (2009).
Education
M.A., Creative Writing and English Literature, City University of New York, 1993. Graduated summa cum laude.
Thesis story collection semi-finalist for Flannery O’Connor Award.
Winner, Geraldine Griffin Moore Award and Goodman Fund Grant.
One Book Semester Queens University of Charlotte. I worked with an editor of a leading New York publishing house to refine my novel-in-progress. (2013).
Gordon Lish, Center for Fiction in New York, 2012.
Recent residencies include the Noepe Center for Literary Arts (2014) Bread Loaf (2011 and 2013) and the New York State Summer Writers Institute (2010) I won a partial fellowship to attend Summer Literary Seminars, St. Petersburg Russia, Herzen University, (June 2006).
Related
Featured Panelist, Techniques in Narrative Nonfiction, first annual Ocean State Writers Conference, University of Rhode Island, June 22-23, 2007, Kingston, RI. Organizer and panel moderator, 2009.
Master of Ceremonies – Writers Night Out, reading series, 2006 -2007, featuring local and national authors, including Tin House novelist, Karen Lee Boren.
Board Member, World Voices World Visions, (2003-2004). World Arts and Folk Festival produced by URI Mutlicultural Center.
Reading and Discussion on my book, Great Women Writers, Marymount Manhattann College, 1996-97
Acquisitions and Contributing Editor, Global City Review, 1994-1996.
Auxiliary
2010-2011 — Founding Board of Directors Member, Phoenix Rising, an organization that helps people with Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome.
Pro bono work includes several years’ sandwich delivery for Coalition for the Homeless, New York, NY.
Contributing editor for Fortune News, publication for prison inmates and recently released offenders, New York City and Bedford, New York.
My other work history runs the gamut from scrubbing toilets in London to writing annual reports and white papers for companies like AIG and S&P.