Author • Educator • Presenter
Commitment to human rights
Janet has a life long commitment to human rights. She is a teacher—in the broadest sense of the word—in all she undertakes. She enjoyed her time in the classroom with her students, and continues her work supporting activist causes. The third part of her life’s passion is writing. Currently she is contemplating two new book projects. She loves writing her blog and connecting with hundreds of people whom comment on the blog.
Books by Janet Levine
New Book Forthcoming in 2022
I’m thrilled to share that I have signed a contract with Armin Lear Press to publish my nonfiction book, Reading Matters. Available at end of April 2022.
Know Your Parenting Personality
Parenting Book
How To Use the Enneagram To Become The Best Parent You Can Be. Filled with practical advice taken from interviews with scores of parents and uses the e-model as a tool to improve family dynamics.
The Enneagram Intelligences: Understanding Personality for Effective Teaching and Learning
Educational Book
This book has helped thousands of educators to understand their motivations for how they teach and how their students learn. In 2000 it was nominated for the 2001 Grawemeyer Education Award. Translated into several languages it is now regarded as a “classic” work in Enneagram studies. Both these books are available in e-book formats
Inside Apartheid
Political Memoir
Bears witness to the horrors of living within the apartheid system from the perspective of a white activist. Levine, a crusading freelance journalist, was an elected public official, and she held office in many anti-apartheid organizations. She shares her love for the country as she fights against the tyranny of racism that tears at the lives of all South Africans. Inside Apartheid was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, Kirkus Review, et al.
Kirkus review: “A grim account by a white liberal South African expatriate of life “”in the belly of the beast”” that is apartheid. . . A compelling, chastening work.”
Leela’s Gift
Fiction
Janet’s latest book, a novel, “Leela’s Gift” (2009) is available at www.amazon.com and other online and brick bookstores. It describes a luminous inner journey that uncovers archetypal and highly relevant spiritual teachings including some of the secret teachings of Buddhism and the Enneagram. Among these are meditation and yoga practices, practical paths to freedom from the often dispiriting quality of our contemporary lives. “Leela’s Gift” intertwines modern philosophy and primal wisdom in telling a story as old as the human heart. You can read more about the novel and Janet’s work at www.leelasgift.com.
Updates & Writer’s Blog
Janet Levine Blog/Review in New York Journal of Books: Parisian Lives (Posted on November 14, 2019)
The gift Bair gives us in Parisian Lives is a direct and knowing contemplation of the works of two literary giants—and the circumstances of their lives as they were written. Her memoir radiates that same honesty about her life and work.
Janet Levine Blog/Review in New York Journal of Books: Wild Life: Memoir (Posted November 14, 2019)
“Wild Life is a page-turner with universal appeal, but a special gift for young girls and women, their brothers, and male acquaintances.”
Janet Levine Blog/Review in New York Journal of Books: Cantoras: A Novel (Posted November 6 2019)
“If this book were an opera, De Robertis would be deafened by curtain call after curtain call after every performance. It is, to say the least, a most memorable page turner that carries a siren call of hope.”
Janet Levine Blog: NYJB REVIEW: Paper Chains: A Novel
Paper Chains, despite its subject matter, is a well told tale of two young women who serendipitously meet in a jewelry shop in London, England. They soon discover they are Australians abroad, one from Sydney, the other Perth. India, from Perth, is bombastic, almost frenetically upbeat and energetic, while Hannah is reserved with a hang-dog affect. She rarely lifts her head other than to talk briefly with someone. She is a long-distance runner who is trying to outrun her guilt and shame.
Janet Levine Blog: NYJB REVIEW: The Resurrection of Joan Ashby
In Wolas’ pages, Joan’s fully embodied motherhood, despite her ambiguous doubts about her role, are brilliantly accurate. Every mother who has sacrificed her ambition and talents for motherhood will find she is reading about herself. Every husband and wife whose marriage is torn apart will gain new perspectives from reading this novel. Every adult child who wonders about their parents’ relationship to one another and to themselves and their siblings will find a mirror shard here.
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jlevinegrp November 29, 2021 KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON https://t.co/Kzv6fupDlT
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jlevinegrp November 16, 2021 https://t.co/iEbugFUXe9 Selling infrastructure
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jlevinegrp November 5, 2021 https://t.co/XjM067Rg8u Finally some legislative progress!
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jlevinegrp October 31, 2021 https://t.co/zcItFrFGRU We are on a precipitous slide away from democracy
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jlevinegrp October 27, 2021 https://t.co/0HUQ0lj4hF the TRUTH will out…it always does no matter how long it takes
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jlevinegrp October 27, 2021 https://t.co/0HUQ0lj4hF Bad news!
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jlevinegrp Gorgeous fall day, hiking near Tracy City in Tennessee https://t.co/OST9vgd8kF
Janet's work with the Enneagram:
What is Janet currently writing?
Non-fiction: READING MATTERS: How Literature Influences Life
By examining prominent texts, throughout history and from all parts of the world, readers will become more aware of how worldviews are created, developed, dissolved, and sometimes decimated…including their own.
(Work in Progress) Olivia's Ghosts
What is Janet currently reading?
Fall 2021
Matrix by Lauren Groff is a welcome assault on readers’ sensibilities–in this case ears and eyes, to say nothing of minds. In uniquely syntaxed prose, lucid and almost cinematographic in the unfolding of her tale, Groff creates a 12th century world that relies on biblical, magical, witchcrafted and Arthurian legendary ingredients to blend her matrix. Matrix means “mother” in Latin and that is what Marie de France becomes for the hundreds of women who eventually dwell and work in her feminist utopia. Groff is a most gifted writer. It is with a poet’s grace and power that her tale, especially Marie’s splendid visions, soar for writer and reader alike. Marie arrives, an odd and resentfully smouldering adolescent at a poverty stricken abbey, populated by scarce, starving nuns and over decades turns it into a famous, small-scale, Vatican like religious institution. As Marie realizes on her deathbed “greatness was not the same as goodness.” But Groff knows that greatness makes for an engrossing read. And her readers are thankful.
Fall 2021
In Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, this highly regarded author delivers another slamdunk novel. Hamnet is her first venture into historical fiction. She creates the ethos of rural, Elizabethan England within the story of grief-stricken domesticity, as an unpretentious family deals with tragedy and devastating loss. There is an etheral thread to O’Farrell’s prose, as if beneath the everyday doings of the family, another world exists, one in which the supernatural explores its own reality unknown and unseen to human sensibilities and sensorary perception. The central figure of the novel is Agnes, Hamnet’s mother. His father, initially a struggling playwright in London, is hardly ever home. O’Farrell never mentions him by name (but we know who the man is and will become.) Agnes is regarded suspiciously by her neighbors, and they create a myth around her. Agnes is an unusual figure, a woman striding into the forest with her kestrel on her wrist. She is a noted herbalist, a healer, and these gifts add to her notoriety.
A thoroughly engaging and thought-provoking novel. Highly recommend you read this intriguing book.
Speaking Engagement Bookings
Janet Levine is a popular speaker in the areas of her expertise, among them, how reading great literature influences life, the Enneagram personality model, and the politics of past and present day South Africa that shape that country’s future. She also presents talks on writing and the writing process while sharing her experiences. In her presentations she uses her books, videos and additional material where necessary. Janet has presented these materials internationally at conferences and workshops across North America and beyond. She can shape her presentation to fit your needs. For an extensive listing of past speaking references CLICK HERE.
From Inspirational Faculty video, Milton Academy, 2018
Copyright © Janet Levine, All Rights Reserved, 2019