June Levine

Who was June Levine?

June Levine was an Irish journalist, novelist and feminist, who played a central part in the Irish women's movement. She was born and raised in a Jewish family in Dublin, and wrote her first articles for The Irish Times when she was still a teenager. At the age of eighteen she married Kenneth Mesbur, a Jewish medical student from Canada. She moved to Ontario and had three children by him. However, the marriage broke down and she returned with her children to Dublin, where she worked as a journalist. She edited the Irish Women's Journal, and worked as a researcher for RTE for five years.

She wrote two best selling books, Sisters, a personal history of the feminist movement, and Lyn: A Story of Prostitution. Her novel is A Season of Weddings. She was also involved with the Irish women's movement, alongside figures such as Mary Kenny, Margaret Gaj and Mary Maher. In 1971 she travelled with other feminists, including Mary Kenny and Nell McCafferty, on the so-called "Contraceptive Train" when they travelled to Belfast to buy condoms.

In 1999, June Levine married her partner of thirty years, psychiatrist Professor Ivor Browne.