About Donna
Donna Levin’s work is included in Boston University’s Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center and in the California State Library’s collection of California novels.
Donna Levin is the author of Extraordinary Means, California Street, There’s More Than One Way Home, and He Could Be Another Bill Gates.
In April, 2024, Skyhorse will publish The Talking Stick, a dramedy about four women who discover that some of their most-cherished memories are romanticized versions of the truth.
In addition to novels, Donna has published two books about writing: Get that Novel Started and Get that Novel Written, both with Writer’s Digest Books.
Donna has taught fiction writing for three decades, most notably at the University of California Extension at Berkeley, where she led the novel writing workshop. She has also been a frequent guest at writers’ conferences, including the San Francisco Writers’ Conference and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.
She lives in San Francisco.
For more information, go to her Wikipedia page.
“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
Thomas Mann
University Papers
Boston University
In 1990, I received a letter in the mail from archivist Howard Gotlieb, saying he’d like to collect my papers at Boston University’s Special Collections, after my second novel, California Street, had been brought to his attention by a writer at the New York Times. I was honored, of course. My husband and I met Dr. Gotlieb in 1991 when we were in Boston, and he showed us, among other items, one of Bette Davis’s Oscars, which she had donated. In 2003, Special Collections became the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research center, as a tribute to Dr. Gotlieb’s work.
California State Library
Historian and California State Librarian Kevin Starr contacted me in the early 2000s to become part of the Library’s California novels collection. My novels are all set in the San Francisco Bay Area and California.
“Nothing is harder than being a true novelist, unless that’s all one wants to be, in which case, while being a true novelist is hard, everything else is harder.”
John Gardner