Beth Kaplan began her work as a professional actress and left the stage at thirty to earn an MFA in creative writing at University of British Columbia. She has been teaching memoir and personal essay writing at Ryerson University since 1994 and since 2007 also at the University of Toronto, where recently she was given the Excellence in Teaching award. Her personal essays have appeared in newspapers and magazines and on CBC Radio. She is the author of Finding the Jewish Shakespeare: The Life and Legacy of Jacob Gordin (University of Syracuse Press), a biography of her great-grandfather, and the Sixties memoir All My Loving: Coming of Age with Paul McCartney in Paris (BPS Books).