.

He has also been a book reviewer for The Detroit Free Press and The Washington Post, and has published both short stories and essays in a wide variety of both LGBT and Jewish publications.

in English from Michigan State University in 1986.

His first short story collection, Dancing on Tisha B’Av, won a Lambda Literary Award in the Gay Debut Fiction category at the 3rd Lambda Literary Awards in 1990. He was also nominated for Lambdas in the Gay Fiction category at the 5th Lambda Literary Awards in 1992 for his novel Winter Eyes, in the Spirituality category at the 9th Lambda Literary Awards in 1997 for his memoir Journeys and Arrivals, and in the Gay Mystery category at the 12th Lambda Literary Awards in 2000 for The Death of a Constant Lover.

Featured in two documentaries, he has been a panelist at London's Jewish Film Festival.

Along with hundreds of book reviews in papers from The Washington Post to The Detroit Free Press, Raphael has published many dozens of essays, articles, and stories in a wide range of publications. The Washington Post has compared The German Money to John le Carré, Phillip Roth, and Kafka.

His Holocaust survivor parents were culturally Jewish but not religious.

As an adult, he changed his name to Lev as a part of reclaiming his Jewish heritage, and later adopted the surname Raphael to reaffirm his Jewishness and abandoned a German one.

Achievements

• He studied English at Fordham University and creative writing and English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he won the Harvey Swados Fiction Prize awarded by Martha Foley, editor of The Best American Short Stories for his first published short story which later appeared in Redbook.

  He had his own radio interview show on Michigan Radio where his guests included Salman Rushdie, Erica Jong, and Julian Barnes.

  Raphael has keynoted three international Holocaust conferences where he received standing ovations, as well as appearing at hundreds of invited lectures and readings in North America, Western Europe and Israel at libraries, museums, churches and synagogues, colleges and universities.

  Education

  He received a Doctor of Philosophy in English from Michigan State University in 1986.

  Career

  He has published work in a variety of genres, including literary fiction, murder mysteries, fantasy, short stories, memoir and non-fiction, and is known for being one of the most prominent LGBT figures in contemporary Jewish American literature.

  His stories and essays are on university syllabi around the U.S. and in Canada; his fiction has been analyzed in books, scholarly journals and at scholarly conferences, including MLA. Michigan State University's Library collects his literary papers for its Special Archives.

  Born and raised in New York City, he received his MFA in Creative Writing and English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he won the Harvey Swados Fiction Prize, awarded by renowned editor Martha Foley for a story later published in Redbook.

  Lev Raphael

  He was born as Reuben Lewis Steinberg in New York City. He won the Crossing Boundaries Award from International Quarterly for "Losing My Mother", an essay contained in his memoir a Jewish Life.The judge was D.M. Thomas, author of The White Hotel.

Works

• book

  • Hot Rocks (Nick Hoffman Mysteries)

    (When Professor Nick Hoffman and his partner Stefan return...)

  • Burning Down the House (Nick Hoffman Mysteries)

    (Nick Hoffman's State University of Michigan is a place wh...)

  • Winter Eyes : Roman German language