Michele Levy

Born a Yankee in Providence, Rhode Island, after seven years in Boston, I moved with my family to Wisconsin and Northern Virginia. Then I continued the southern trend with graduate studies in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and followed my Brooklyn-born husband even farther south, to New Orleans. Twenty-six years later, we traded the Superdome (seven minutes away from our house by car) for the North Carolina woods. This wandering stripped away my Boston accent, leaving a tendency to enunciate clearly that made New Orleanians think I was from England.

From the age of four I have played classical piano and read voraciously. But an exposure to Balkan dance in high school kindled what became a life-long passion. Still, my love for D. H. Lawrence and Dostoevsky led me to a PhD in Comparative Literature (English, French, Russian), and then to universities, where I taught, researched, and became a chair. Though I first published on Russian and European authors, my academic interest shifted to the Balkans. I wrote on Balkan history and literature and returned to the region (I’d first visited in 1968) in 2000, after the end of the Bosnian War, and 2002, invited by the Serbian Writers’ Association. By then I’d begun to write poetry and stories with Balkan settings. Anna’s Dance grew from my deep engagement with Balkan history and culture.

These days, I play piano and read, but mostly I write. I’m working on a novel about a Bosnian asylee in New Orleans. Carolina’s nature nurtures me, my husband and I enjoy our three children and seven grandchildren, who have moved nearby, and I still do Balkan dance!