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: NYJB REVIEW: In the Midst of Winter
In the Midst of Winter: A Novel Reviewed by: Janet Levine Well known and adored by millions of readers worldwide, Chilean-American author, Isabel Allende with her 21st novel In the Midst of Winter will please multitudes of her fans and also leave them uneasy. Uneasy...
JANET LEVINE BLOG: NYJB REVIEW: Sacrificed
In Sacrificed the arcs of many storylines merge and part and ultimately leave several threads hanging. This in itself is satisfying and realistic, an intelligent way to conclude the book. Intimate family trajectories, as well as those of grandiose political schemas cannot be neatly packaged simply because they have become more transparent to the characters and the reader. Ultimately, we are left with some answers but also more questions.
JANET LEVINE BLOG: NYJB REVIEW: Stolen Girls
Over that decade, thousands of other women, men, and boys have been abducted by Boko Haram and taken to hideouts in swampy rain forests in western Nigeria called Sambisa. Inevitably the world’s attention left Nigeria and the abducted girls. However, German journalist Wolfgang Bauer and his brilliant photographer, Andy Spira, with this book fill the gap.
JANET LEVINE BLOG: NYJB REVIEW: Long Black Veil: A Novel
The strongest parts of the book occur when Boylan writes from the point of view of the trans character who finds marginal redemption. This is not surprising as Boylan herself is trans and her character’s experience rings powerfully true.
JANET LEVINE BLOG: NYJB REVIEW: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
Trevor Noah’s autobiography of his childhood and adolescence in this perilous, shifting landscape cleverly avoids polemical statements and moral platitudes. The very facts of how he learns to navigate the political currents swirling around him provides vivid commentary on those challenging times for South Africa.
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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