Levin is the daughter of Charlotte E. Levin and Herbert L. Levin of Yardley, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1976, and Johns Hopkins University in 1977. She was an Associate Professor of English at The University of Maryland, College Park, and is currently a visiting professor in the graduate writing program at New York University and a teaching poet-in-residence at Hofstra University.[1] She is also an elector of the American Poets' Corner of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, and the co-director of the Sarah Lawrence Language Exchange. She is a member of PEN.[2] Her poems have been published in Poets for Life, Poetry,[3]Ploughshares,[4]AGNI,[5] and The New Yorker.[6]