TWO PIANOS       

TWO PIANOS:  BIOS

Nora Jean Levin, the first “real American” in her 1930s immigrant family, earned political science degrees from the University of Pennsylvania where she met Michael.  One of her skills is identifying and connecting human networks that reinforce each other.  From 2004-18 she directed Caring From a Distance, Inc., America's only non-profit supporting long-distance caregivers (www.cfad.org). She also authored How to Care for Your Parents: A Handbook for Adult Children (Storm King Press, 1987-1993), later How to Care for your Parents: A Practical Guide to Eldercare (Norton, 1997).  Jean has been a secondary school social studies teacher; researcher at the Brookings Institution and National Academy of Public Administration; co-founder of The Workplace, Inc., Washington D.C.'s first shared-office suite for writers, consultants and non-profit staff; and co-author of To Light One Candle: A Handbook for Organizing, Funding and Maintaining Public Service Projects (ABA Press, 1978-1979).  Her public service includes stints on a U.S. Department of Education Advisory committee on Accreditation and Institutional Eligibility, participation in the 1995 White House Conference on Aging, and terms on lifelong-learning advisory committees plus synagogue, mental health and women business-owner boards.

 

Michael Levin has been writing creatively all his adult life, legal deadlines notwithstanding.  He brings to Papers Please lessons learned as advocate, negotiator and renewable energy developer.  He has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard Law School and Oxford University (U.K.).   Pursued by a Vietnam-era draft board he declined graduate play-writing fellowships, likely saving American theater.     Before private practice Mike served as an appellate lawyer and executive in federal agencies; in the Carter White House as Deputy Director of a Cabinet-level Task Force; and as legislative aide to former Rep. Andrew Maguire (D-NJ) and the late Sen Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA).    His third poetry collection, Falcons, was published July 2020.  He is "as told to" co-author with Jean of A Border Town in Poland, the first-person memoir of Anna's husband Hirsch. Some of his work is at www.michaellevinpoetry.com

Ken has a BA from Cornell University, an MD from Eastern Virginia Medical School, and an MPH from Harvard. He is board-certified in psychiatry, preventive medicine and addiction psychiatry.  He established the Center in Addiction Medicine at the Uniformed Services University, served as the Army’s primary alcohol and drug consultant, and was senior medical officer at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and Clinical Director for Mental Health Services at the U.S. State Department.  Ken has a consulting private practice in Rockville MD. Since 2009-10 he has served on the Board of Directors of Oxford House (https://www.oxfordhouse.org/userfiles/file/), a national network of over 2400 self-supported substance-abuse recovery homes, and by gubernatorial appointment on the Montgomery College Board of Trustees (http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/). 

Stephanie Reyer, Papers Please exhibit and publications designer, was an exhibit designer at the American Museum of Natural History (NYC) and principal exhibit designer at the Museum of the U.S. Constitution (Independence Mall, Philadelphia). She currently teaches exhibit design at Philadelphia's University of the Arts.