On graduating from Yale in 1977, Jonathan received a Mellon Fellowship to Cambridge, where he directed many plays (including the European premiere of Chris Durang’s The Idiots Karamazov), played violin with fusion jazz quartet Antares and Robyn Hitchcock’s post-punk Softboys, and co-founded the new edition of the literary magazine Granta, for which he served as US Editor through 1987. Levi is the author of the novels A Guide for the Perplexed and Septimania. His short stories and articles have appeared in many magazines including The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, GQ, Granta, and The Nation. From 1996-2001 he served as Fiction Critic for the LA Times Book Review. Levi’s libretti for operas, musicals and plays have been performed in the U.S., Europe and as far away as Tbilisi, Georgia. As a theatrical producer, Levi has overseen such projects as Carly Simon’s opera, Romulus Hunt, and a 1997 production of Robert Pinsky’s translation of Dante’s Inferno. Levi has also served as “Minister of Arts & Culture” for the NYC Board of Ed., as the first Director of the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, and as co-founder of the Zaubersee Russian Music Festival in Lucerne. He has been Resident Artist at Bellagio, the American Academy in Rome, and Civitella Ranieri in Umbria. Since 2005, Levi has divided his time between NYC, Rome and Colombia, where he is co-director of the Gabriel García Márquez Fellowship in Cultural Journalism.