79: Michele Levy - Author of Anna's Dance: A Balkan Odyssey

Mining her personal knowledge of the Balkans from a long-ago adventure, Michele's debut braids historical events with a young woman's personal journey to find her roots, a journey which rang to the author personally because of her own explorations into her own Jewish cultural heritage. Praised for its lyrical beauty, her manuscript nevertheless was deemed "hard to market" before finding a home with Black Rose Writing.    

Now a resident of the Tar Heel state, Michele Levy lived a nomadic life growing up, living in Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Virginia. Her college degree in history and her love of language and literature steered her to UNC for graduate studies, where the field of Comparative Literature provided the perfect avenue to explore all her interests. Once she moved to New Orleans with her husband, she become an assistant professor, teaching and publishing on Russian and European authors while raising three children, and eventually chairing her department. Her life-long passion for the distinctive richness and vitality of the Balkan culture, a painful amalgam of both East and West, led her to study and eventually publish on the literature and history of that region and ultimately, provided the rich background for her debut novel.

To learn more about Michele, and connect with her, click here.