Toni Mergentime Levi is a poet and librettist. White Food, her new book of poems from Mayapple Press, was preceded by two other full-length collections: Watching Mother Disappear & Other Poems (Mayapple Press, 2009) and For A Dancing Bear (Three Mile Harbor, 1995). Her work has also appeared in numerous journals including Prairie Schooner, Crosscurrents, Confrontation, Kansas Quarterly, California Quarterly and Apalachee Quarterly, as well as online (Poetry Daily), on radio (WBAI-FM) and in anthologies including two editions of The Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry.

Toni has been awarded residencies at VCCA, Schloss Wiepersdorf (Germany), Konstepidemin (Sweden), MacDowell, Djerassi, Ucross, Millay and Saltonstall. Thanksgiving, one of two operas and several other collaborations with composer Paul Alan Levi, won a Grand Prize for New Opera from the National Music Theater Network. The opera has been performed at the American Music Theater Festival, Lincoln Center’s Newhouse Theatre, 42nd Street’s Theater Row (NYC) and other venues. In 2007, a collaboration with composer Charles Fussell premiered at the Tanglewood Music Center and will be released on a recording by the Boston Modern Opera Project. A native New Yorker, Toni lives in Manhattan. Her website is www.tonilevi.com [2].