Beth Kaplan
BIO
Biography

My fifth book, Midlife Solo: writing through chaos to find my place in the world, a memoir-in-essays, was launched in November 2023.

I spent my twenties as a professional actress, but in 1980 left the stage to take an MFA in Creative Writing at UBC, delivering my thesis, a biography of my once-famous great-grandfather, the day before my second child was born. In 1994, while continuing research on my relative and raising two children as a single mother in Toronto, I began teaching creative non-fiction and memoir writing at Ryerson University and later also at U of T. I published scores of personal essays in the Globe and other newspapers and magazines and regularly read my own work on CBC radio. Finding the Jewish Shakespeare: the Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin was published by Syracuse University Press in 2007; I spoke about the book throughout the U.S. and Canada, at Oxford University, and in French in Paris. The paperback edition was launched in New York in 2012 with a blurb from renowned playwright Tony Kushner. I've since published the sixties memoir All My Loving: coming of age with Paul McCartney in Paris, and True to Life: 50 steps to help you tell your story, which is the textbook for my courses. My second memoir Loose Woman: my odyssey from lost to found, about my life as an actress and the year, 1979, when everything changed forever, released in September 2020, was a finalist for the Whistler Independent Book award. 

ADDRESS
City: Toronto, Province/Territory: Ontario
EMAIL
GENRE
creative nonfiction/memoir
LANGUAGES
English, though I am fluent in French
LINKS
Programs & Interests
Interested in participating Union’s Ontario Writers-in-the-Schools program:
All members are eligible for the Union’s Ontario Writers-in-the-Schools program. Are you interested in participating in this pro
No
Interested in participating in the Northern Ontario WITS program:
The Union’s Northern Ontario Writers-in-the-Schools program funds in-person visits to northern Ontario schools when possible. Ar
No