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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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SLONIM WOODS 9

Daniel Barban Levin

A stunning firsthand account of the creation of a modern cult under conman Larry Ray and the horrifying costs paid by his young victims: his daughter's college roommates.
In September 2010, at the beginning of the academic year at Sarah Lawrence College, a sophomore named Talia Ray asked her roommates if her father could stay with them for a while. No one objected. Her father, Larry Ray, was just released from prison, having spent three years behind bars after a conviction during a bitter custody dispute.

Larry Ray arrived at the dorm, a communal house called Slonim Woods 9, and stayed for the whole year. Over the course of innumerable counseling sessions and "family meetings," the intense and forceful Ray convinced his daughter's friends that he alone could help them "achieve clarity." Eventually, Ray and the students moved into a small Manhattan apartment, beginning years of manipulation and abuse, as Ray tightened his control over his young charges through blackmail, extortion, and ritualized humiliation. After a decade of secrecy, Larry Ray was finally indicted on charges of extortion, sex trafficking, forced labor, and money laundering.

Daniel Barban Levin was one of the original residents of Slonim Woods 9. Beginning the moment Daniel set foot on Sarah Lawrence's idyllic campus and spanning the two years he spent in the grip of a megalomaniac, this brave, lyrical, and redemptive memoir reveals how a group of friends were led from college to a cult without the world even noticing.

Daniel Barban Levin holds an MFA in poetry from the University of California, Irvine, where he taught creative writing and rhetoric, and a bachelor's degree from Sarah Lawrence College. He is the winner of the Stanley and Evelyn Lipkin Prize for Poetry, the Lynn Garnier Memorial Award and is the recipient of fellowships from The Frost Place, Tent, The Sarah Lawrence Summer Seminar for Writers, and The Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Provincetown Arts, Bat City Review, The Sarah Lawrence Review, The Westchester Review, The Offbeat, The Fourth River, and The Bennington Review. He lives in Los Angeles.
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Published 2021-09-07 by Crown

Comments

NYLON talked to Levin, who is now based in Los Angeles, about the experience of excavating trauma and taking back a story that you were told wasn't yours. Read more...

Levin vividly evokes the collegiate atmosphere of the early 2010s... An unusual, affecting portrait of how post-adolescent power dynamics are susceptible to cultish abuse.

USA Today's New York media - feature interview with Daniel Read more...

Thrilling... A biting, observant memoir about [Barban Levin's] experience, as he excavates the reasons he was so drawn into Ray's grasp.

Levin's writing is powerful throughout: he doesn't dwell in shame but rather finds a way to make peace with the past and move forward. A poetic and intimate memoir of a harrowing ordeal. Any reader interested in the workings of cults or the experiences of people in cults will find this book worthwhile. Read more...

COURT APPEARANCES APR. 16, 2022 Why Do We Fail People in Cults? Lessons from the Larry Ray trial... Read more...

Extremely vulnerable and extraordinary account of what happened to Levin and the emotional and psychological fallout. Of course, nobody plans to end up in a cult, which makes the book so tantalizing: There's both a morbid curiosity to learn what happened and how and why - but an even bigger impulse to see Levin come out the other side.

Protected from Ourselves: Daniel Barban Levin Interviewed by Frances Badalamenti Read more...

Poet Levin debuts with a chilling account of the two years he spent living as part of a cult. Writing in eloquent prose, he describes how such a thing can happen, and why, as he puts it, "The alarms kept screaming, and we ignored them..." It's tragic, but it's also a powerful portrayal of a young man's ability to emerge whole from an experience intended to break him. As dark as it is, there's real beauty in this story. Read more...

Trailer for STOLEN YOUTH Read more...

"Nobody joins a cult. They join a group of friends": What went down in the "Sarah Lawrence cult" - Daniel Barban Levin talks about his experience in "Sarah Lawrence cult" and his new memoir, "Slonim Woods 9" Read more...

It's an intense tale of coercion, humiliation, gaslighting and physical torment. It's also one of hard-won survival, and creating a life after the unimaginable. What this book illuminates so clearly to people who have not been in what we would characterize as cults, or in abusive relationships, is they don't start out abusive.

Insightful and often heartwrenching.

SLONIM WOODS 9 is the inspiration for the Hulu docuseries STOLEN YOUTH, directed by Zach Heinzerling and co-produced by Daniel Barban Levin. The series will premiere on Hulu on February 9th, 2023!!