[3] Levine was born in New York City where she studied piano at Juilliard and went to Music & Art High School.
[1][4] A scholar of Latin American literature, her books include one of the first studies of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Adolfo Bioy Casares, both published in Spanish.
[citation needed] She has written two poetry chapbooks and hundreds of essays in major anthologies and journals.
She is a translator of a range of writers including Silvina Ocampo, Clarice Lispector, Cecilia Vicuña, Jorge Luis Borges, Manuel Puig, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Carlos Fuentes, José Donoso, Julio Cortázar and Guillermo Cabrera Infante.
[6] She has been recipient of numerous grants and awards from the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) and for the Humanities (NEH).