Lois Leveen is an American writer and educator based in Portland, Oregon.
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Leveen is a contributor to the New York Times Disunion blog, which tracks the causes of the Civil War. She is currently completing a novel based on the life of Mary Bowser, "a Richmond slave who became a spy for the Union army."[1][2][3]
Her essay "The Ice Age", about her father's mid-life crisis as a figure skater appeared in The Oregon Literary Review in 2008[4].
Her Christmas-themed piece "No Place Like Homo for the Holidays" was featured in the 2010 Lambda Literary Award winning[5] anthology Portland Queer[6][7]
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[8], a book about Portland, Oregon by Portlanders.
In 2008 her piece critical of the television character Dora the Explorer appeared in Bitch Magazine[9]
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.[10]
Her poem "Cognative Dissonance" was featured in the Jewish feminist journal Bridges in 2009[11]
Her poem "Walloon at Walgreens" appeared in Monkey Puzzle # 8 in 2009[12]
Leveen is Jewish. Since 2008 she has been an ethics columnist ("The Shmeticist") for The Jew and the Carrot, a Jewish food blog.[13]
The non-profit organization Literary Arts has run "Delve Readers' Seminars" since 2005. Lois Leveen has led several of these:[14]
2010:
2009:
2008:
2007:
2006:
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.[15]
Lois was the inspiration and model for the character of Natalie Leibowitz-Hernandez on the Adult Swim cartoon Mission Hill[16], 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.[17]
Since 2007 Leveen and her partner have created four 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.
As a Harvard undergraduate, Lois volunteered with the university's Peer Contraceptive Counselors, demonstrating her leadership during an incident in which she climbed upon an Adams House dining table to exhort fellow students not to use the condoms they'd just stolen from the house Christmas tree, as these had been rendered unreliable by their attachment to the tree with safety pins.
Lois' lifelong commitment to LGBT issues was reinforced by her friendships with fellow Harvard students, including Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation President and former Massachusetts State Senator Jarrett Barrios. She wrote passionately about the importance of the queer community at Harvard in a letter to Harvard Magazine.
Lois continued her advocacy by carrying the now-legendary "**** the Patriarchy" sign at the 1989 March for Women's Lives in Washington DC.
Before graduating from Harvard in 1990, a stuffed whale that had formerly been in Lois' possession was, after a ceremonial parade through the Lil' Peach convenience store, deposited on a table at the local intellectuals' gathering spot Cafe Pamplona, with a note bearing the cryptic plea, "Cafe con leche, por favor."
After an encounter with Bay Area accordion and pyrotechnic maestro Kimrick Smythe[18], Lois embraced the accordion fully. Her increasing proficiency and resurrection of Christmas carols and Yiddish[19] standards became a staple of the annual San Francisco Lingerie Thanksgiving[20].