Levare House Publishing
Stories that inspire.
Values that matter.
Two shelves, one house. Literary fiction for adults who have watched someone they love get processed by a system. Children's books that make complicated grown-up ideas small enough to hold.
Literary Fiction
Dark humor about ordinary people and the institutions that process them. Grief, aging, autonomy, dignity — and the paperwork standing between a person and all four.
Read the fiction →Children's Books
Stories that build confidence in young readers, explain professional worlds to families, and make room for children whose differences are invisible.
Browse the shelf →Why this press exists
Use storytelling to make complex worlds — emotional, professional, and institutional — more human, more accessible, and easier to understand. Mission · Levare House Publishing
Twenty years inside audit, governance and risk teaches you one thing above all others: systems are made of people, and people are rarely what the system thinks they are. Both shelves here come out of that.
Levare is Latin — to lift, to raise, to remove. Every book published here lifts something that was sitting in the dark and asks you to look at it properly.
The whole storyWays in
Four doors
Depending on who you are, there is something here for you that is not simply a book to buy.
Students
A remote, 4-credit illustration internship with real titles, real deadlines and a real credit line.
Apply →Universities
Placement staff and faculty: supervision model, assessment rubric, and how a partnership works.
Partner with us →ARC Readers
Read it before anyone else. Say what you actually thought. Open to both shelves.
Join the list →Press
Bios, core messages, speaking topics and interview questions already written for you.
Press kit →On the horizon
What's coming
Literary fiction
Nobody is Coming
The second novel, expected late November 2026. Grief, zoning law, and a bartender who turns up to the meetings. ARC readers on the literary fiction list get it first.
Children's
Two ideas, not a series
The children's list grows along two lines: making professional worlds — governance, risk, audit, AI — understandable to families, and putting invisible disabilities where a child can see themselves in them.
Program
Beyond one campus
The illustration internship began with UCCS. It is opening to additional institutions, with a creative-writing track to follow.
Advance copies
Read it first. Be honest about it.
We would rather have thirty readers who say what they really thought than three hundred who say it was nice. Pick your shelf, tell us how you read, and we will send the next one your way.
For adults
Literary Fiction
Written as Carlo J. Levare. Dark humor about ordinary people, the institutions that mean well and grind anyway, and the stubbornness it takes to keep standing in front of one.
Coming November 2026 · A prequel that stands alone
Nobody is Coming
A Novel of South Philadelphia · Carlo J. Levare
The room is real. The door is unlocked. And nobody is coming.
Some guy nobody knew looked at the photograph behind the bar and said four words about the kid in it.
Dario Esposito came over the bar sideways. It took three of his friends to haul him off, which it always did, and had since they were teenagers.
That should have been the end of it.
Instead there's a notice taped to his door with a city seal on it. An inspection that happened on a Sunday morning, when the bar was closed. And four pages sitting in City Council with a number buried in the back — eighteen thousand square feet of contiguous lot area — which turns out to be the exact size of his corner.
Dario has poured drinks at Eleven Thirty-Two South most of his life. He buried his wife and his son in the same week, seventeen years ago, and he has opened at noon every day since, because the alternative is not opening.
He is not a hero. He is not clever. The only document he ever pries loose from the city says that no documents exist.
But the meetings are public. The calendar is printed. And on a weekday afternoon, in a room built for a hundred, there is almost nobody in the chairs.
A profane, stubbornly funny novel about grief, zoning law, and the terrible freedom of finding out that the people in charge were never going to show up either.
From the front of the book:
“All our municipal governments are more or less bad. Philadelphia is simply the most corrupt and the most contented.” — Lincoln Steffens, 1903
The average number of residents who testify at a Philadelphia zoning or licensing committee hearing is fewer than two. Most of the time it is none.
Nothing in this book requires a lawyer, a fortune, or a hero. It requires an afternoon, and it is available today, in any town in America.
For the ones who show up.
— the dedication
Publication expected late November 2026. Chronologically this comes before Counting the Days of Our Lives, but it was written to be read on its own merits — no prior reading required. Advance copies go to ARC readers on the literary fiction list first.
Counting the Days of Our Lives
A novel · Carlo J. Levare
Dario Esposito wakes up strapped to a gurney in a care facility, with no clear memory of how he got there and no obvious way out.
What follows is not a thriller. It is something more uncomfortable: the slow, procedural, deeply funny business of a man arguing for his own competence against an institution that has already filed its answer. His only reliable ally is a fellow resident known as the Colonel, whose grip on the situation is roughly as firm as Dario's and considerably more belligerent.
This is a book about what happens to dignity when it meets a care plan. If you have sat in a family meeting about a parent, nodded at a clipboard, and driven home furious without being able to say exactly why — this one is for you.
If you liked
Shelf neighbors
Readers who get along with this book tend to already own something by Fredrik Backman, Matt Haig, Jenny Lawson, Steven Rowley or Jonathan Tropper.
Warmth and bleakness in the same sentence. Protagonists who are difficult on purpose. Jokes that arrive at the worst possible moment and are the truest thing on the page.
Written for
- Adult children of aging parents
- Healthcare and care-facility workers
- Gen X readers who want a protagonist, not a plot device
- Intergenerational book clubs
- Mental health and recovery communities
- Veterans and military families
- Anyone arguing with an institution right now
What ties them together
One man, two rooms
Nobody is Coming is a prequel to Counting the Days of Our Lives, and it is written to stand entirely on its own. Start with either one.
Dario Esposito is Dario in both. Carrying the same loss, arguing with a different institution, solving the problem in front of him the only way he knows how — stubbornly, profanely, and a good deal funnier than the situation deserves.
Read them in publication order and you watch a man you already know get younger. Read them in story order and you watch the same refusal arrive somewhere it cannot win. Neither is wrong.
What connects them is not plot. It is a man who will argue with anything except a piece of paper somebody asks him to sign about himself.
Get on the ARC listReader reviews matter more than you think
For a publisher this size, a handful of honest reviews is the difference between a book being found and a book disappearing. If you have read one of these, two sentences on Amazon or Goodreads does more for it than any advertisement we could buy.
For young readers
Children's Books
Two ideas, one shelf. Make professional worlds — governance, risk, audit, artificial intelligence — understandable to families and classrooms. And bring invisible disabilities to the forefront, where a child can see themselves in them.
Finn the Forgetful Fish
Picture book · Illustrated by Rose Cox
Finn forgets things. Where he was going, what he was doing, what he was just about to say. The other fish notice. Finn notices them noticing.
This is a book about anxiety and perseverance for children whose minds work at a different speed — distractible, forgetful, full of ideas that arrive sideways, and quietly worried about what everybody else is thinking. It does not fix Finn, because Finn does not need fixing. It gives him a way through, and it gives the adult reading aloud a way to talk about it.
Illustrated by Rose Cox, then an undergraduate at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, commissioned and paid for the work. She kept her copyright and is credited on the cover. The Levare House internship grew out of this collaboration.
Finn was the book that brought the Invisible Disabilities Association to the table.
What GRC Means to Me
Rhyming picture book
Governance, risk and compliance — explained at a kitchen table, in rhyme, to someone who has not yet mastered their own shoes.
It sounds like a joke until you read it. Every household already runs on governance: who decides, what the rules are, what happens when they are broken. The book includes a genuine standard operating procedure for tying a shoelace, which is both a gag and an entirely accurate piece of process documentation.
Written for the children of people who work in audit, risk, compliance and security, and who have never once been able to explain at a school assembly what it is they actually do.
Illustrated by Rowan Niewald, then an undergraduate at Metropolitan State University of Denver, commissioned directly and paid for the work. She kept her copyright.
Ailo and the Bright Ideas' Adventures
Picture book · Illustrated for young readers
Ailo is an AI helper. Ailo does not know everything — that is rather the point — and learns alongside the child and the parent rather than above them.
Children are growing up with these tools in the house already. This book treats that as neither a miracle nor a menace, but as something a family can be curious about together: ask good questions, check the answers, notice when something is wrong, and keep thinking for yourself.
The second job
Invisible does not mean imaginary
A child who forgets, who drifts, who processes the world at a different tempo is not being difficult. Most of the time they are working considerably harder than the children around them to arrive at the same place.
These books are written so that child recognizes themselves on the page without being the problem of the story — and so the adult reading aloud has language for a conversation that is otherwise hard to start.
Levare House is proud to work with the Invisible Disabilities Association in support of that aim.
These books are published to a purpose. At least 70% of net royalties from the children's list goes to the Invisible Disabilities Association and to an organization supporting students entering governance, risk and audit.
invisibledisabilities.org →
Illustrated by students
Where the artwork comes from
The children's list is illustrated in part by university students working through our illustration internship — properly briefed, properly credited, properly part of the book.
It is how Finn came to look the way it does, and it is how the next ones will be made too.
Students · Part of the children's book program
Children's Book Illustration & Creative Writing Internship
Remote. Four credits. Fifteen weeks. You help make a real book that real children will read, and your name goes in it.
Apply now for future internship opportunities. Talk with your professor about applying. Universities interested in bringing a track to their students can find details on the For Universities page.
The work
Not a shadowing exercise
You are not going to fetch anything. You will be given a manuscript, a brief, and a schedule, and you will produce illustrations that go into a published book.
That means art direction you have to respond to, revisions you may disagree with, and deadlines that exist because a printer exists. It is the actual job, at the scale a student can carry alongside a full course load.
You keep your portfolio rights. You are credited in the book. You finish the semester with a published title and a professional reference.
| Credits | 4 academic credits |
| Commitment | 10–12 hours per week |
| Length | 15 weeks, one semester |
| Location | Fully remote |
| Eligibility | Junior and senior undergraduates |
| Track | Children's book illustration |
| Credit line | Named in the published book |
| Portfolio | Rights retained by the artist |
How it runs
Five stages
Apply
Portfolio, artist statement and eligibility details through a single online form.
Review
Every application is scored independently against the same published rubric by the publisher and by faculty. Scores are averaged, not negotiated.
Decision
Admit, interview, waitlist or decline. Everyone hears back — and everyone who is not selected receives specific, criterion-level feedback on what to strengthen.
The semester
Brief, thumbnails, roughs, revisions, finals. Regular check-ins with the publisher and with your faculty supervisor.
Publication
The book goes out into the world with your name in it, and you leave with finished, printed work in your portfolio.
Illustration track
What your portfolio must contain
These are requirements, not suggestions. An application missing any of them does not reach the scoring stage.
- 8–12 pieces total
- At least one character design set — a character from multiple angles and expressions
- At least two full-page illustrations
- 3–5 sequential images telling a single story
- Sketches and concept work, not only finished pieces
- 300 DPI minimum on all submitted files
- An artist statement of 250–300 words
- Attestation that the work is original
- AI use declared — permitted for concept exploration only
On sequential work
This is the piece most applicants skip, and it is the one that matters most. A picture book is not a gallery of images — it is a sequence that has to carry a reader from one page to the next.
Three to five images telling one small story tells us more than twelve beautiful unrelated pieces.
On the artist statement
Write about how you work and why — what you are drawn to, how you solve a page, what you are still getting better at. It is read, it is scored, and honesty reads far better than polish.
On AI
You may use it to explore concepts. You may not submit it as your illustration work. Declare it either way. An undeclared AI piece is an automatic decline — not because the tool is forbidden, but because the omission is.
Creative writing track
What your submission must contain
These are requirements, not suggestions. An application missing any of them does not reach the scoring stage.
- Two manuscripts, each up to 2,000 words, linked
- A short description of how the two manuscripts differ
- A longer fiction sample, linked
- A revision sample showing how you have revised a piece of work
- Links that are publicly viewable
What both tracks share
- Open to junior and senior students
- A writer's or artist's statement of 250–300 words
- Attestation that the work is original
- AI use declared — permitted for concept exploration only
- Access to a word processor. Canva or Adobe may also be needed.
Everyone gets an answer
Including the people we do not select. If your application does not succeed, you will receive the reasons and specific recommendations for what to develop before applying again. Silence is not a decision, and we do not use it as one.
Flyers
Share the internship
Students can download a flyer to share with classmates. Talk with your professor about applying, or send them this page.
Commissions
Paid work for independent illustrators and writers
Levare House commissions independent illustrators and writers for paid work, with no academic arrangement required.
Open call
Not a student? We commission directly.
The internship is one way in. It is not the only one. Levare House commissions independent illustrators and writers for paid work, with no academic arrangement required.
Illustrators
Children's picture books, interior spreads and cover art. If you work in a style that reads warm to a four-year-old and holds up at 300 DPI, we would like to see it.
Send: a link to your portfolio, or six to ten pieces. Include at least one character shown more than once, so we can see consistency.
Submit a portfolioWriters
Picture book manuscripts — fiction. Stories for young readers that carry something real underneath them. We are particularly interested in invisible conditions, and in stories that let a child recognize themselves in a character nobody else in the book can quite see.
Send: the full manuscript if it is a picture book — they are short. A one-page premise and a sample if it is longer.
Send a manuscriptWhat the terms look like
- The work is paid. We agree a fee before anything starts.
- You keep your copyright. Levare House takes a license, not ownership.
- You are credited as the illustrator or author on the book, in every format and edition.
- You keep full portfolio and self-promotion rights.
- If you are a student, a personalized letter of recommendation on completion. Both illustrators published so far have one.
- All production costs sit with the publisher. You are never asked to contribute.
This is how What GRC Means to Me happened. Rowan Niewald was commissioned directly, paid for the work, credited on the cover, and kept her copyright. No program, no application cycle, no institution in the middle.
Share the internship
Know a school or university that could use this?
If you think the internship will help your alma mater's university and/or school district, please share it with them.
See the internshipFaculty · Internship coordinators · Career services
A credit-ready publishing partnership at zero cost to founding partner institutions
Levare House places undergraduate illustrators and writers on live children's book projects. Fifteen weeks, four credits, fully remote — and the model has already produced a published title.
The publisher serves as the industry instructor of record for the program, delivering the syllabus, assessment and evaluation directly. The books the students work on are published to a purpose: the majority of what the books earn is donated.
Credits and weekly hours can be adjusted to each university's requirements.
Proof of concept
Two students. Two published books. Both commissioned.
This is not a pilot waiting for its first result. It has already happened twice, with students at two institutions — and the program exists because it did. Both were commissions, paid at a freelance rate. Interns earn academic credit. The internship work is not paid. A student who would rather be paid can be commissioned instead.
The book that started it
Finn the Forgetful Fish
Illustrated by Rose Cox
University of Colorado Colorado Springs · on Amazon now
Commissioned directly
What GRC Means to Me
Illustrated by Rowan Niewald
Metropolitan State University of Denver · on Amazon now
Both were undergraduates. Both produced all of the original artwork for their title. Both retained their copyright, are credited as the illustrator, and both were paid for the work. Both books are on sale.
Both also left with a personalized letter of recommendation for their portfolio.
That is the whole argument. This is not a shadowing arrangement or a simulated brief — the work students do here is the work that gets printed, and there are finished objects that prove it.
Neither book came out of a program, because there was not one yet. Both students were commissioned and paid under a straightforward freelance agreement.
Finn came first, and it worked. A faculty member who watched it happen asked the obvious question: if a student is going to do this much real work, why is she not getting credit for it? The internship is the answer to that question — the structure built so the next student does not have to do it on her own time.
Two tracks
Illustration and creative writing.
The same structure, the same semester, the same assessment discipline — applied to two different kinds of student.
Future opportunities
Illustration track
For students in Art, Illustration or Visual Communication. Character design, page spread illustration, cover art, and production-ready file preparation.
Apply now for future internship opportunities. Talk with your professor about applying.
Student detailsAvailable on request
Creative writing track
For students in Creative Writing, English or Children's Literature. Manuscript development, age-appropriate narrative structure, text-image integration, and the editorial cycle.
Built and ready. We open a cohort when an institution wants one.
Ask about this trackThe semester
Three phases, fifteen weeks
Aligned to a standard academic calendar, with defined deliverables in every phase.
Weeks 1–5
Foundation
Onboarding and orientation; the practicum agreement; genre and market research; concept sketches and style exploration; first creative brief and feedback session.
Weeks 6–10
Development
Character and visual storytelling refined; page-level creative work; editorial feedback and revision cycles; midterm review with the faculty supervisor in week 8.
Weeks 11–15
Capstone
Final deliverables, portfolio materials, reflection and presentation-ready work demonstrating growth across the semester. Final capstone review in week 14.
The partnership
Who provides what
Levare House provides
- Real project assignments on live publishing titles
- Professional mentorship from a working publisher
- Project manuscripts, creative briefs and style guides
- Production specifications and digital asset libraries
- Canva Pro access for design collaboration
- Formal midterm and end-of-semester evaluations
- Personalized letters of recommendation
- A named credit line in the published book
The university provides
- A faculty supervisor for academic oversight
- A practicum or independent study course framework
- Credit-hour administration and transcript recording
- Institutional imaging software access (e.g. Adobe Creative Suite)
- Academic accommodations support, if applicable
Everything from Levare House is provided at zero cost to founding partner institutions and to the student.
What we ask of faculty
A light, defined commitment
The supervisor is the academic anchor, not a second project manager. The time commitment is deliberately small and specified in advance.
| Week 1 | Orientation meeting with the student; review the practicum agreement covering deliverables, timelines and intellectual property |
| Week 8 | Midterm review |
| Week 14 | Final capstone review |
| Weekly | Review the student's reflection journal, submitted each Friday |
| Throughout | Academic guidance and alignment with departmental learning outcomes |
A full Faculty Supervisor Guide, formal syllabus and executive summary are available on request — before any agreement is signed.
Learning objectives
What the student can do afterward
- Apply professional illustration techniques to children's book spreads and cover art — or draft and revise manuscripts under editorial mentorship
- Translate narrative text into sequential visual composition — or develop age-appropriate structure, pacing and vocabulary
- Refine a personal style suited to the children's book market
- Practice professional correspondence, creative briefs and revision cycles with a publisher
- Navigate real publishing timelines: layout, proofing, pre-press
- Assemble a polished, market-ready portfolio of professional-grade work
Applicable departments: Art, Illustration and Visual Communication; Creative Writing, English and Children's Literature.
Also available
A guest lecture, with or without the internship
A department does not have to host the program to use me. I give classroom talks on explaining technical work to non-experts, on fiction set inside institutions, and on what governance, risk and audit careers actually involve — at no cost to partner institutions, remote or in person.
See the talksWhy this exists
A program, not a product line
The children's titles are not published to make money. They are published to teach something and to fund something.
At least 70% of net royalties from the children's list is directed to two organizations:
- The Invisible Disabilities Association, from the titles about conditions that are real and unseen
- A partner organization supporting students entering governance, risk, audit and digital trust — from the titles that make those subjects legible to children
The remaining share covers production: cover art, ISBNs, proofs, review copies and the administration of the internship itself. The program is already built and distribution costs nothing, so overhead stays low on purpose.
This is why the internship can be offered the way it is. Students on the academic credit track take credit rather than a fee, and in exchange they receive something a classroom cannot issue: a published book, a permanent credit line, their own copyright, and a real market.
They are not producing free labor for a commercial press. They are contributing to a charitable publishing program, and the agreement they sign says so in writing.
Admission
How applications are scored
Eight criteria, each scored 1–5 with mandatory written evidence, weighted and scaled to 100. Faculty and publisher score independently and the two are averaged. Nothing is scored on impression alone, and a zero means absent or not assessable, not merely weak.
| Drawing fundamentals | Weight 5.0 |
| Character design | Weight 5.0 |
| Sequential storytelling | Weight 4.0 |
| Composition | Weight 3.0 |
| Color and light | Weight 3.0 |
| Market fit | Weight 2.5 |
| Production readiness | Weight 1.5 |
| Artist statement | Weight 1.0 |
| 85–100 | Admit |
| 70–84 | Interview |
| 55–69 | Waitlist |
| Below 55 | Decline |
Applications, scores, decisions and feedback are recorded with a full audit trail — including every applicant who was not selected. Every unsuccessful applicant receives written, criterion-level feedback.
Where this is going
Expanding beyond the first campus
The program began with the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. It is now open to additional institutions, across both tracks.
If you run an internship program, a practicum, or a studio course and this looks like something your students should have access to, write to us. One email, no form.
Useful to know
- Remote — no geographic restriction on partners
- Zero cost to the university and to the student
- Syllabus, faculty guide and rubric provided up front
- Cohort size kept small deliberately
- One published title already produced by a student
- Illustration track live now; writing track on request
Flyers
Share the internship
Use these flyers in your course, on your program page, or in your student newsletter.
Faculty
Faculty review guide
How to complete a portfolio review in Microsoft Forms: the scoring scale, the criteria for each track, and the review rules. No SharePoint account is needed. Questions go to john@levarehouse.com.
Download the review guide (Word)Partnership overview
Run one track or both
The illustration and creative writing tracks can run independently or together as one combined department program.
Book royalties support charity and nonprofits
70% of book royalties goes to charitable and/or nonprofit organizations. Invisible Disabilities Association is in discussion as a partner. 30% covers the administrative costs of running the program.
Middle and high school · Illustration and creative writing
A published book, for students who are ready to start
A school district program for middle and high school students interested in illustration or creative writing. The goal is the same as our university internship: a published children's book with the student's name in it.
Who it is for
Middle and high school students interested in illustration or creative writing.
What is different
The entry criteria are less stringent than the university internship. The goal stays the same.
The goal
A published children's book, the same outcome as the university program.
Proceeds return to your district
The split is 70/30. 70% of book proceeds goes back to the participating school district, and 30% covers the administrative costs of running the program.
Pricing
Pricing depends on each district's requirements. We set it with you directly after we understand what your district needs.
Get involved
Start a conversation with your district
Program details, including format and schedule, will be shared once they are confirmed. Teachers and district staff can reach out now.
Contact John@LevareHouse.comAdvance Reader Copies
Read it before anybody else
Free advance copies in exchange for an honest review. Emphasis firmly on honest.
What this is
A small, useful group of readers
An Advance Reader Copy goes out before publication. You read it early, and when the book is released you post what you thought of it — Amazon, Goodreads, wherever you normally talk about books.
For a publisher this size, this is not marketing garnish. A handful of real reviews in the first two weeks is the difference between a book being discoverable and a book quietly vanishing. There is no advertising budget here that does what you do.
So: say what you actually thought. A mix of reviews reads as real. A wall of five stars reads as bought, and does the book no favors at all.
What we ask of you
- Read it within the review window — usually about two weeks
- Post an honest review when the book is released
- Mention that you received a free advance copy
- Tell us if you cannot make it — a reply is enough
What we will not do
- Ask you for a positive review
- Remove you for writing a critical one
- Send you a book from a shelf you did not choose
- Pass your details to anyone, ever
How it works
From sign-up to review
Sign up
A short form. Tell us which shelf interests you — children's books, literary fiction, or both — and where you post reviews.
You join the list
Everyone starts on the waitlist. This is not a judgment on you; it keeps the group small enough that every reader actually matters.
A title opens
When an advance copy is ready on your shelf, it arrives by email with a download link, the release date and the review deadline.
You read it
Digital by default. If print copies exist and you asked for one, we will write separately to ask where to send it.
You post what you thought
Two honest sentences beat five paragraphs of summary. Then we leave you alone until the next one.
Honest answers to awkward questions
Before you sign up
What if I hate it?
Say so, in the review, in public. That is the deal. A critical review from a real reader is worth more to this press than a kind one from a friend.
How often will you email me?
When there is a book. That is genuinely it. No newsletter, no updates, no reminders about things you did not ask about.
Do I have to take every book?
No. Skip any title you do not fancy and stay on the list for the next one.
What happens to my address?
We only ask for one if a printed copy is going to you, we use it for that package only, and it is deleted thirty days after the book ships. That is an automated process, not a promise we have to remember to keep.
Sign up
Both shelves, one form
It takes about three minutes. You will be asked which lane you want, how you read, where you post reviews, and — because we are curious — what is actually motivating you here: the future ego boost, or the feral-draft energy?
Join the ARC listYou can leave at any time by replying to any email we send you. No form, no button to hunt for.
About
Carlo J. Levare
A pen name, chosen rather than inherited, and chosen for a reason.
Carlo honors Italian heritage. Levare is Latin: to lift, to raise, to remove. Together they describe the only thing these books consistently try to do — lift the emotional and structural pressures that usually go unseen, and hold them up where somebody has to look.
Behind the name is John C. Cusimano, who spent more than twenty years in IT audit, governance and risk. Two decades of sitting inside complex systems — watching how they are designed, how they fail, and what happens to the person on the receiving end — is not a detour from the writing. It is the reason the writing exists.
Born in Philadelphia. Based between Erie, Colorado; Ambler, Pennsylvania; and Toulon, France.
Levare House Publishing is the house that holds both shelves: the literary fiction written as Carlo J. Levare, and the children's books that take the same instinct — explain the thing properly, to the person who needs it — and aim it at a much younger reader.
Use storytelling to make complex worlds — emotional, professional, and institutional — more human, more accessible, and easier to understand.The mission, in one sentence
What the two shelves have in common
One instinct, two audiences
For adults
A man fighting a care facility for the right to be considered competent. The humor is the point: it is how people survive institutions, and it is how the reader survives the subject.
For children
A forgetful fish, a rhyming explanation of risk and compliance, and an AI helper who does not know everything. Complicated things, made small enough to hold.
Looking forward
Mentorship, and the next generation
The part of this work I care about most is mentorship. Craft is passed on person to person. A student who gets honest, specific feedback from a working publisher learns faster, and keeps that standard for the rest of their career.
Teaching the next generation of illustrators and writers is why Levare House Publishing exists beyond its own titles. It is the reason the university internship, the school district program, and the open call are built the way they are.
Student voices
Tell your story, in your own words and pictures
If you have faced a struggle in life, you can describe it in your own voice and illustrate it in your own style. Your story is yours. Before any student story is shared publicly, it goes through a consent and rights review that follows the guidelines of the participating university or school district. That review covers how each story is presented, in both publishing and presentation.
Ask about sharing your storySpeaking
Talks for people who have to explain something hard
Governance and risk, invisible conditions, and what happens when you ask undergraduates to make a real book. I speak to university classes, professional chapters, and the organizations whose work these books are about.
Background
Where this comes from
I spend my working life in governance, risk and audit — explaining complicated obligations to people who did not ask to hear about them. That is the same problem a picture book solves, which is how one of these books came to exist at all.
I have taught this material in front of rooms for a long time. I built and taught governance curricula inside two global firms — writing the programs, not just presenting someone else's slides — and have guest lectured in university classrooms in the United States and in France. More recently I recorded a conversation with the Invisible Disabilities Association, published two undergraduate illustrators, and built the credit-bearing internship that came out of doing it.
The talks below come out of work I actually do, not a list of subjects I am willing to look up.
Formats
- 45–60 minute lecture with questions
- A 20 minute class visit — shorter, more conversational, good alongside a studio critique
- Panel or podcast appearance
- Half-day workshop for groups doing their own explaining
Remote sessions are straightforward to arrange on short notice. In person depends on travel — ask and we will work it out.
Teaching record
Where I have taught
University teaching, and corporate training programs I wrote and then taught, across governance, architecture and general management.
Bay Path University
Guest lecturer, IT management — invited twice to speak to the class on consulting practice and where the industry was heading.
Université de Toulon
Guest lecturer, English language — a session conducted in English on American history and how local government actually works, for students practicing the language.
Arthur Andersen · St. Charles
Developed and delivered a corporate training program on governance and application development, taught at the firm's central training campus.
PwC
Developed and delivered a training program on network architecture governance in the context of service-oriented architecture.
For university classes
Classroom talks
Built for illustration, creative writing, information systems and accounting students. No cost to partner institutions.
Making the incomprehensible teachable
How you take governance, risk, audit — or any body of knowledge built out of jargon — and get it into language a non-expert will sit still for. Uses a children's book about GRC as the worked example, because it is the hardest possible version of the problem.
Publishing as coursework
For illustration and creative writing faculty: how two undergraduates ended up credited, paid, and on sale — what the process looked like, where it nearly came apart, and what a department needs to have in place for it to count for credit.
What governance, risk and audit actually look like
A career talk for students who have heard the job titles and have no picture of the work. What the days consist of, what gets you hired, and why the field keeps hiring people who can write clearly.
Writing the institution
A craft talk for creative writing students on fiction set inside systems — hospitals, city government, the rooms where decisions get made about people who are not present. Research, voice, and keeping a novel from becoming a complaint.
For professional associations
Chapter meetings and conferences
For professional association chapters, internal audit groups, and anyone whose members have to make a board care about risk.
Governance Drift
Controls do not usually fail. They loosen — quietly, in small reasonable increments, each one defensible on its own, until the thing that was designed no longer resembles the thing that is running. This is the framework I have been developing in a seven-part written series: how drift starts, why it is nearly invisible from inside, and what detects it before an auditor does.
Writing on governance drift
- IT GRC Doesn't Fail Loudly. It Fails Quietly — And Then All At Once.
- Governance Drift: Quiet Risk and Regulatory Exposure
- Six Vectors: How Governance Drift Actually Happens
- The Bill Comes Due: What Governance Drift Actually Costs
- Measuring the Invisible: Ten Metrics That Expose Governance Drift
- The Anti-Drift Playbook: Five Moves That Actually Work
- The Boardroom Test: Three Questions Every Director Should Ask
Other GRC writing
- The Numbers Behind Misdiagnosis
- Misdiagnosis: It's Your Tool Ownership Model
- Control Frameworks Create Environments Where Talent Thrives
- Governance and Inclusive Talent Development
- Auditing in the Cloud Era: Why Vendor Evidence Is Your Lifeline
- Audit Frameworks for Changing Technology
Available as a 45–60 minute session or a half-day workshop.
If you cannot explain it to a five-year-old
Communicating risk to people who do not work in it — boards, executives, the business. What I learned writing for an audience that will physically leave if you are boring, and how little of it is about simplifying.
Why I wrote a children's book about GRC
The honest version: where the idea came from, what happened when I tried to explain governance without the vocabulary, and what it changed about how I write a finding.
Building a pipeline out of real work
For chapters thinking about student outreach: what it took to turn an idea into a credit-bearing program with a rubric, an assessment schedule and published output — and why paying students mattered more than anything else in it.
Writing
Where the thinking gets worked out
Between books I publish long-form writing on governance and risk — most recently a seven-part series on Governance Drift. If you want to know how I think about this material before putting me in front of your members, that is the place to look.
For advocacy groups, schools and educators
Invisible conditions
Invisible does not mean imaginary
On writing for children whose difficulties nobody can see — anxiety, distraction, the quiet worry about what everyone else is thinking. What changes when a book refuses to fix the child.
A reading, and a conversation after
For schools, libraries and family events. A read aloud followed by the part that actually matters — the questions adults ask once a child has given them the opening.
Levare House directs the majority of net royalties from these titles to the Invisible Disabilities Association.
Booking
Tell me the audience, the length, and roughly when. If none of the topics above is quite right, say what you need and I will tell you honestly whether I am the person for it.
John@LevareHouse.com
Press kit
Everything a journalist needs, already written
Bios at two lengths, the core messages, topics worth booking, and questions that produce a usable answer.
Core messages
Five things this press is about
01 · Dignity inside systems
Institutions are made of people and rarely see them. The fiction is about what that costs.
02 · Humor as survival
Dark comedy is not a tonal choice here. It is how people actually get through the worst rooms they are ever in.
03 · Invisible differences
Children's books that make room for readers whose difficulties nobody can see — written in partnership with the Invisible Disabilities Association.
04 · Explaining the grown-up world
Governance, risk, artificial intelligence — explained to a five-year-old, which is the hardest audience there is.
05 · Students make real books
A credit-bearing illustration internship that puts undergraduate artwork into published children's titles, with a named credit line and a documented, rubric-based admission process.
Short bio
50 words
Carlo J. Levare is the pen name of John C. Cusimano, founder of Levare House Publishing. After two decades in IT audit and risk, he writes dark literary fiction about institutions and children's books about the things grown-ups struggle to explain. He divides his time between Colorado, Pennsylvania and France.
Long bio
150 words
Carlo J. Levare is the pen name of John C. Cusimano. Carlo honors his Italian heritage; Levare is Latin for to lift, to raise, to remove — which is what his books try to do with pressures that usually go unnoticed.
He spent more than twenty years inside IT audit, governance and risk, watching how complex systems are built, how they fail, and what that does to the person at the end of the process. His debut novel, Counting the Days of Our Lives, follows Dario Esposito as he argues for his own competence from a gurney in a care facility. A second novel, Nobody is Coming — about grief, zoning law and a bartender who starts attending city council meetings — is expected in late 2026.
Through Levare House Publishing he also writes children's books on perseverance, professional life and artificial intelligence, and runs a credit-bearing illustration internship for university students. Born in Philadelphia, he lives between Erie, Colorado; Ambler, Pennsylvania; and Toulon, France.
Recent appearances
On the record
Available for interviews, panels and classroom visits — remote or in person.
In conversation with the Invisible Disabilities Association
On Finn the Forgetful Fish — writing a character whose difficulties nobody can see from across a room — and on the student internship that puts undergraduate illustrators into published books. Watch on YouTube →
Booking
Interviews, podcasts, panels and school or library visits. Topics below, or propose your own.
Request an interviewSpeaking
Topics
- What twenty years in audit teaches you about writing people
- Aging, autonomy and the paperwork in between
- Dark humor as a survival strategy, on the page and off it
- Explaining artificial intelligence to a five-year-old
- Writing for children with invisible disabilities
- Building a student internship that produces published work
- Independent publishing without an advertising budget
Interviews
Questions worth asking
- Why a pen name, and why that one?
- Where did Dario Esposito come from, and why go back to him?
- Zoning law is not an obvious subject for a novel. Why that?
- Is it harder to write for adults or for five-year-olds?
- What does an auditor notice that a novelist might not?
- Why put governance and compliance into a children's book?
- What do students get out of illustrating a real title?
- What is the hardest thing to make a child understand honestly?
Contact
Get in touch
One address reaches everything. It is read by a person, and that person is usually me.
General & press
Interviews, review copies, rights inquiries, or anything that does not fit a category.
John@LevareHouse.comUniversities
Placement staff and faculty interested in the illustration internship for their students.
Partnership inquiryReaders
Thoughts on a book, a correction, or an argument you want to have about the ending. All welcome.
Say helloQuick links
Based
| Publisher | Levare House Publishing |
| Author | Carlo J. Levare pen name of John C. Cusimano |
| Locations | Erie, Colorado · Ambler, Pennsylvania · Toulon, France |
| John@LevareHouse.com |