ecnarrator@gmail.com
Bio
I’m M. LaVora Perry, the founder and publisher of The East Cleveland Narrator. I’ve lived in East Cleveland since 1992. My children attended Chambers Elementary School. From 2013 – 2020, I was the website designer, developer, and administrator for the city’s website, eastcleveland.org.
I started The East Cleveland Narrator (2014 – 2015) print and digital newspaper after the editor of a local paper that constantly posted negative content about our city told me: “Nothing good ever happens East Cleveland.” Fed up with media coverage of East Cleveland that ignored our positive stories, I started The East Cleveland Narrator with the motto “One Community: Telling Our Own True Stories.” You can read The East Cleveland Narrator archived issues in PDF.
I launched ecnarrator.org on May 8, 2026 to help residents share our ideas and vision for East Cleveland and beyond, and inform each other about what’s happening in our community.
Voice your ideas and vision on our public comment form. Send information about community meetings, events, resources, and stories to ecnarrator@gmail.com.
You must TYPE your information into your message the way you want it to appear online. If you only send a PDF or image it will not be posted. This is to enable people with certain disabilities to read it. But DO also send an image, if possible. A screenshot is fine.
Bio
I was born and raised in Cleveland’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood and attended Alexander Hamilton Junior High. I graduated high school from Hathaway Brown, attended Ithaca College as an Acting major, City College of New York as a Speech major, and earned a B.S. in Education from Cleveland State University. In 1995, I became the first greeting card writer of African descent hired in American Greetings’ then 75-year history. I earned two of their Creative Excellence Awards — one for writing, the other for creating and editing the In Rhythm card line. I set my book — Taneesha Never Disparaging — in a city modeled after East Cleveland. Multiple award-winning illustrator the late Floyd Cooper illustrated the cover. It’s the world’s first children’s novel whose protagonist is a black Buddhist child. The Dalai Lama’s publisher, Wisdom Publications, released it. As an actor, I’ve performed in theatrical productions in Cleveland, New York, the Southeastern United States, and Europe. After retiring from acting for 26 years, from 2017 to 2024, I appeared in several commercials shot in New York and other cities and states, such as Maryland, Detroit, Philadelphia and Miami. These include spots for American Express, Bud Light, and Navy Federal Credit Union.
I’ve practiced and taught Nichiren Buddhism since 1987 and chant the Lotus Sutra’s title: Namu Myoho Renge Kyo (I devote my life to the Lotus Flower Teaching of the Buddha). I publish Lotus Sutra Buddhism as posts, podcasts, and videos at lotussutrabuddhism.substack.com. Its subscribers and followers hail from every continent except Antarctica. The top countries are the United States and the Netherlands. Go figure. Two quotes from Nichiren that I try to live by are “I should first of all learn about death, and then about other things” and “A coward cannot have any of her prayers answered.”
