Lois Leveen

Lois M. Leveen is an American writer and educator based in Portland, Oregon.

Writing

The Secrets of Mary Bowser, Civil War fiction and Historical nonfiction

Leveen's first novel was The Secrets of Mary Bowser (2012, William Morrow, ISBN 9780062107916), based on the life of Mary Bowser, "a Richmond slave who became a spy for the Union army."[1][2][3][4] In August 2012, the novel was chosen as a Target club pick[5] and named one of the Oregonian's "Top 10 Northwest Books of 2012."[6]

Leveen also writes historical articles about the Civil War as a contributor to the New York Times Disunion blog, which tracks the causes of the Civil War. She has written about the life of Mary Bowser in "A Black Spy in the Confederate White House," as well as articles on the enslaved and free black community in Richmond, Virginia; on Joseph Reid Anderson, controversial owner of Tredegar Ironworks; and on Chimborazo, a large army hospital in Richmond.

Leveen's most recent research, "The Vanishing Black Woman Spy Reappears," and "What the 'Mary Bowser' Story Gets Wrong," focuses on the real woman on whom her novel is based, who is more accurately identified as Mary Richards Denman. Leveen in currently writing a nonfiction book about Mary Richards Denman.[7][8]

Juliet's Nurse

Leveen's second novel Juliet's Nurse (2014, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 9781476757445) reimagines the story of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet from the point of view of the nurse.[9] Prior to the book's publication, Leveen gave talks at conferences around the world about how her studies of fourteenth-century Italian history shaped the novel.[10][11] As part of her research for this project, Leveen developed an interest in apiculture and worked with the City of Portland to ease regulations for local beekeepers.[12]

Creative Nonfiction

Her essay "The Ice Age", about her father's mid-life crisis as a figure skater appeared in The Oregon Literary Review in 2008.[13]

Her Christmas-themed piece "Gay Apparel" was featured in the 2010 Lambda Literary Award-winning[14] anthology Portland Queer[15][16]

In 2008, her short story describing her experiences with and love for the sidewalk "Free Box" was published in an anthology called, Our Portland Story,[17] a book about Portland, Oregon by Portlanders.

Critical Essays

In 2008 her piece critical of the television character Dora the Explorer appeared in Bitch Magazine[18]

In 2003, her essay "Pitiful strategies : Richard Delgado's legal storytelling and the politics of racial representation" appeared in CrossRoutes, the meanings of "race" for the 21st century, an international collection of critical race theory.[19]

Poetry

Her poem "Welcome water" is inscribed on the wall of a hospital in Oregon.[20]

Her poem "Cognative Dissonance" was featured in the Jewish feminist journal Bridges in 2009[21]

Her poem "Walloon at Walgreens" appeared in Monkey Puzzle # 8 in 2009[22]

Columns

Leveen is Jewish. She published several articles for the Daily Forward in June 2012.[[File:[23]]] Since 2008 she has been an ethics columnist ("The Shmeticist") for The Jew and the Carrot, a Jewish food blog.[24] She has also written for Interfaith Family[25] and she has spoken at the Oregon Jewish Museum.

Medical Humanities

Leveen is active in the field of medical humanities. In 2016-2017, she was a Kienle Scholar in Medical Humanities at Penn State College of Medicine.[26]

Her publications in this field include "The Hidden Dying of Doctors: What the Humanities Can Teach Medicine and Why We All Need Medicine to Learn it,"[27] and "Finding Purpose: Honing the Practice of Making Meaning in Medicine," which appeared in a medical journal.[28]


Teaching

The non-profit organization Literary Arts has run "Delve Readers' Seminars" since 2005. Lois Leveen has led several of these:[29][30]

2019:

Talking to Grief -- Literary Explorations of Loss

2018:

Works of Heart -- Literature and Medical Humanities

2016 and 2017:

Cease Not Until Death

2012:

Reading the Literary Lineage of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

2011:

Breaking the Yoke: The Anti-Slavery Literature that Changed America
Call and Response: Delving into African American Art & Literature

2010:

We, Too, Sing America: 20th-Century Writers & The Legacy Of Whitman
Illustrating Identity In The Age Of The Graphic Novel
Exploding The Canon: How Native American, Asian American And Latina Women Remade American Literature

2009:

Shakespeare: The Tragedies of Empire

2008:

Shakespeare: The Tragedies of Empire
Charles Dickens: Bleak House
William Faulkner & Toni Morrison: Absalom, Absalom! & Beloved
Nathaniel Hawthorne & Gustave Flaubert: The Scarlet Letter & Madame Bovary

2007:

Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man

2006:

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s Cabin

She previously taught at Reed College[31] and UCLA[32]

Radio

Lois Leveen read her personal essay on pseudo-death and rising long-distance rates on episode 68 of the NPR variety show Live Wire in June 2008.[33]

Television: Mission Hill

Lois was the inspiration and model for the character of Natalie Leibowitz-Hernandez on the Adult Swim cartoon Mission Hill,[34] which was created by three of her long-time friends. She auditioned for the voice of her own character, but actress Vicki Lewis was determined to be even more "Lois-y" than Lois Leveen herself, and she was cast in the role instead.[35]

Multimedia

Since 2007 Leveen and her partner have created five videos, including Four Act Foreman with characters drawn from their idiosyncratic selection of objects as part of Performance Works NorthWest's annual Richard Foreman Mini-Festival. Lois served on the Board of Portland's Performance Works NorthWest from 2006 to 2010.

She also served as academic advisor for two multimedia series America's History in the Making and Artifacts and Fiction, produced by Annenberg/CPB.

Music

After an encounter with Bay Area accordion and pyrotechnic maestro Kimrick Smythe,[36] Lois embraced the accordion fully. Her increasing proficiency and resurrection of Christmas carols and Yiddish[37] standards became a staple of the annual San Francisco Lingerie Thanksgiving.[38] She plays accordion in The Stumptown Family Ramblers, a band created by Sarah Dougher.[39][40]

She graduated from Harvard College, University of Southern California, and University of California, Los Angeles.[41]

References
  1. Harper Collins Author page, retrieved 20 July 2012 http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/38440/Lois_Leveen/index.aspx Archived 2012-06-28 at the Wayback Machine
  2. "The North of the South". The New York Times Disunion blog. 24 January 2011.
  3. "The Other Major Anderson". The New York Times Disunion blog. 18 June 2011.
  4. "Mary Bowser novel". Mary Bowser novel. Retrieved 24 January 2011.
  5. "Target Club Pick Aug 2012: The Secrets of Mary B... : Target". Target.
  6. "The Oregonian's top 10 Northwest books of 2012: No. 10 'The Secrets of Mary Bowser' by Lois Leveen". OregonLive.com. Retrieved 2017-04-29.
  7. Lois Leveen, "What the 'Mary Bowser' Story Gets Wrong." TIME https://time.com/5609045/misremembering-mary-bowser/ Retrieved July 20, 2019.
  8. Lois Leveen, "The Vanishing Black Woman Spy Reappears." The Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-vanishing-black-woman-spy-reappears/# Retrieved July 20, 2019.
  9. Simon and Schuster author page, retrieved 19 April 2014 http://books.simonandschuster.com/Juliets-Nurse/Lois-Leveen/9781476757445
  10. Framing Premodern Desires Conference page retrieved 19 April 2014 http://www.utu.fi/en/units/hum/sites/tucemems/news-and-events/colloquiums/premoderndesires/Pages/Program.aspx
  11. Shakespeare 450 Conference page retrieved 19 April 2014 http://www.shakespeareanniversary.org/shake450/panels/panel-16-shakespeare-and-architecture/
  12. "March 2015 Beeline – Portland Urban Beekeepers". Retrieved 2017-04-29.
  13. "The Ice Age". Oregon Literary Review, Vol. 3, No. 1. Winter–Spring 2008. Archived from the original on 2011-07-16. Retrieved 2010-11-17.
  14. "Lambda Literary". Lambda Literary.
  15. Gore, Ariel (ed.). Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City. Lit Star Press, 2009
  16. "Portland-centric anthology on gay life". The Oregonian. June 4, 2009.
  17. Our Portland Story, Volume One.
  18. Leveen, Lois. "Factory Girl: Dora the Explorer and the Dirty Secrets of the Global Industrial Economy". Bitch Magazine Issue 40, "Genesis", Summer 2008.
  19. Boi, Paola (ed.), CrossRoutes, the meanings of "race" for the 21st century. Münster : Lit ; Piscataway, NJ : Distributed in North America by Transaction Publishers, 2003.
  20. Poetry for westside medical center, retrieved April 19, 2014 "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-04-19. Retrieved 2014-04-19.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  21. "Bridges" (PDF). jhu.edu.
  22. "Walloon at Walgreens," in Monkey Puzzle #8. Denver, Colorado: Monkey Puzzle Press, 2009
  23. The Daily Forward, 28 June 2012, http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/tags/lois-leveen/%5B%5D Retrieved 7/20/2012
  24. "The Jew and the Carrot".
  25. "Interfaith Family".
  26. "2016 Colloquium". sites.psu.edu. Retrieved 2019-07-24.
  27. Lois Leveen, "The Hidden Dying of Doctors," The Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-hidden-dying-of-doctors-what-the-humanities-can-teach-medicine-and-why-we-all-need-medicine-to-learn-it/#! Retrieved July 20, 2019.
  28. Lois Leveen, "Finding Purpose: Honing the Practice of Making Meaning in Medicine." Permanente Journal 2017. https://doi.org/10.7812/TPP/17-048 Retrieved July 20, 2019.
  29. "Past Delve Seminars".
  30. "Delve Program Guide: Lois Leveen". Literary Arts. Retrieved 2019-07-24.
  31. "Reed Magazine".
  32. "UCLA course website". Archived from the original on 2010-07-23. Retrieved 2012-04-24.
  33. "Episode 68". livewireradio.org.
  34. https://twitter.com/thatbilloakley/status/2150587298750464%5B%5D
  35. https://twitter.com/thatbilloakley/status/2150853913870336%5B%5D
  36. "Smythe's Accordion Center". smythesaccordioncenter.com.
  37. Yiddish language
  38. "The Mix". San Francisco Bay Guardian. December 3, 2003.
  39. "The Stumptown Family Ramblers". Facebook.
  40. "Biography". sarahdougher.net.
  41. http://loisleveen.com/index.php/loisleveen/bio
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