CHAPEL HILL, NC, December 17, 2025 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Michele Levy, PhD, is a distinguished biographee of Marquis Who's Who. She was recently spotlighted in New York City's Times Square on a 22-story screen that is passed by an estimated 1.5 million people daily. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are chosen from among a pool of the most prominent professionals and are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.

Dr. Levy has built a successful career spanning over four decades in higher education, literary scholarship and cross-cultural engagement. Since 2017, she has held the title of professor emerita at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, where her legacy continues to inspire students and colleagues alike. Since 2022, she has also been teaching adults, primarily retired professors, near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill through a free shared learning program. Since then, Dr. Levy has garnered a dedicated following for her courses, with participants repeatedly enrolling.

Most recently, Dr. Levy completed a course that explored Balkan history and literature, incorporating photographs, music and dance to offer immersive cultural insights. Her current session explores the question of how to live life to the fullest, as presented in novels by Kazantzakis, Silone and Camus. She has also contributed numerous articles and chapters to professional publications and remains active as a reviewer for World Literature Today, with a focus on Balkan literature in translation. Dr. Levy has published more than 100 reviews of translated literature from around the world and ranks among the top 3% of public views on Academia.edu.

In 2020, Dr. Levy published "Anna's Dance: A Balkan Odyssey," a semi-autobiographical novel that weaves Balkan history with a love story set against Macedonia's complex past. Her debut novel – inspired by her own fascination with Balkan dance, literature, history and culture – follows 23-year-old Anna Rossi as she navigates the complexities of her Jewish heritage and internal struggles during a summer in Europe. The novel traces Anna's journey as she takes a perilous turn into conflict in Eastern Europe and the heart of the Balkans, leading her to develop her inner strength to survive.

Highly rated, "Anna's Dance: A Balkan Odyssey" has garnered several glowing reviews. Ron Raglin of The Manhattan Review writes, "[The novel] is an ambitious undertaking. It's part tragic love story, part history lesson, and part travelogue with well-written descriptive passages evoking a simple people living in rustic villages amidst brooding mountains. Rich with drama and passion, it's a poignant story of love and misadventure, the clash of culture and attitudes, and how, as much as we'd like to think otherwise, we're all captives of our personal and collective history." Dr. Levy's novel is available for purchase on Amazon.

Dr. Levy previously served as a professor in the English department at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University from 2004 to 2015. She also chaired the department from 2002 to 2004, leading faculty through significant academic initiatives and fostering an environment of scholarly excellence. Dr. Levy's two-decade-long tenure at Xavier University of Louisiana was equally impactful, as she was both a professor and, later, chair of the department of English. Earlier, Dr. Levy taught civics at Isidore Newman School in New Orleans during the 1980-1981 academic year and served as an English instructor at St. Mary's Dominican College in the fall of 1980. She also worked as an academic advisor at Newcomb College of Tulane University from 1979 to 1980. Dr. Levy's initial academic experiences included serving as a teaching assistant in comparative literature from 1972 to 1973 and in English from 1973 to 1975 at UNC at Chapel Hill.

Developing a passion for languages and literature early on, Dr. Levy was an avid reader in her youth and cultivated an affinity for world languages throughout high school and college, studying Latin, Spanish, French and Russian. Influenced by formative experiences, such as medieval Latin studies under a Harvard-trained classicist and mentorship from the chair of the Russian department at Loyola University New Orleans, Dr. Levy embraced challenges that shaped her scholarly path. Her undergraduate studies culminated in a Bachelor of Arts, with honors, in history from The George Washington University in Washington, DC. She then earned a Master of Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy in comparative literature from UNC at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Levy's expertise and creative works were acknowledged with an invitation from the Serbian Writers' Association to participate in a writers' conference in Belgrade and to attend a two-week workshop in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in 2000, focusing on Croatia after the Bosnian War. Earlier, she received summer grants from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities to lead six-week seminars for high school language arts teachers, as well as several grants from Bard College to lead the first Bard Summer Writing session for high school students, held at an HBCU.

Dr. Levy has been recognized for her commitment to educational equity and transformative teaching. She is particularly proud of her contributions at two historically Black universities, where she mentored students who later achieved doctoral degrees, secured chaired professorships and authored internationally acclaimed works in history.

Dr. Levy continues to contribute to literary criticism and postcolonial studies, with particular emphasis on Balkan and Slavic cultures. She is currently working on a new book while engaging with audiences through interviews and podcasts. She has also recently recorded a podcast with a fellow writer, which will be released soon. Dr. Levy is committed to advancing scholarship through creative writing projects, with the hope of being remembered for her substantial contributions to Balkan and Slavic studies, as well as postcolonial scholarship and her poetry and fiction.

About Marquis Who's Who®:
Since 1899, when A. N. Marquis printed the First Edition of Who's Who in America®, Marquis Who's Who® has chronicled the lives of the most accomplished individuals and innovators from every significant field of endeavor, including politics, business, medicine, law, education, art, religion and entertainment. Who's Who in America® remains an essential biographical source for thousands of researchers, journalists, librarians and executive search firms around the world. The suite of Marquis® publications can be viewed at the official Marquis Who's Who® website, www.marquiswhoswho.com.

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