Quick Facts
GeminiBiography
Richard M. Levine is an American journalist and author.He is best known for Bad Blood: A Family Murder in Marin County, his 1982 book about the murders of Jim and Naomi Olive.
Bad Blood received positive reviews.Greil Marcus, writing in Rolling Stone, argued that "from the beginning of this tale through to its aftermath, the people caught up in its momentum are thrown back on themselves. That is what makes the story Bad Blood has to tell so terrible, and so compelling"Kirkus Reviews wrote that it was a "chilling, fascinating reconstruction" and "a first-class study of a set of American dreams gone wrong."The New York Times, while slightly less enthusiastic, praised "the richness of its detail and the remarkable intimacy with which we get to know its characters."
Early life and education
Born June 19, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York, Richard M. Levine grew up in Great Neck on Long Island. He attended Wesleyan University, graduating with a BA in literature in 1963. He continued his education at the Russian Institute of Columbia University, where he received his MA in Slavic languages and literature in 1966.
Career
Levine has contributed to Rolling Stone, New York, Painted Bride Quarterly, Esquire, Mother Jones, and The New York Times. In addition to being a freelance journalist, he has been a contributing editor and columnist at Esquire, as well as a staff writer and editor at Newsweek and the Saturday Review. He has also taught at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1977, he was awarded an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship.
In 2015, Levine published a book of poetry and a book of short stories.He was a 2016 finalist for both the Eric Hoffer Book Award in Fiction and the Lascaux Prize in Poetry.
Personal life
Levine is married to poet and writer Lucille Lang Day, and they live in Oakland, California.
Books
- Bad Blood:A Family Murder in Marin County (Random House, 1982). ISBN 0394508874
- Catch and Other Poems (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2015). ISBN 978-0976867647
- The Man Who Gave Away His Organs: Tales of Love and Obsession at Midlife (Capra Press, 2015). ISBN 978-1592661046
