MEET BETH SCHORR JAFFE

Beth Schorr Jaffe was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1952, grew up in Canarsie on Avenue ‘K’, took the Avenue ‘J’ bus to Brooklyn College, and graduated with a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing. One day after graduation she moved to Guadalajara, Mexico to spend her first year of marriage helping her husband try to transfer out of the medical school there into a school in the United States. He did. Eventually, they ended up in New Jersey with their two sons, and Beth resumed writing.

While she wrote and raised her sons she spent four years studying art history and design part-time at a local university, and then two more years completing her psychology prerequisites for graduate school. During this time she worked on her novels and submitted small works of fiction and non-fiction, poetry and personal essays to various publications.

In 2000, Simon and Schuster/Fireside was the first to publish her essay “Pretty Enough” in Chocolate for a Teen’s Soul, and then in 2001they published her essay “Her Majesty’s Muscle” in Chocolate for a Woman’s Soul. Also in that year, Kalliope: a Journal of Women’s Literature and Art published a short story,  “Hard Shiny Message.” Fairview Press published a poem, “Walk Me into the Morning” in Women with Cancer and the People who Love Them and in 2002 Haworth Press published an excerpt from her first novel STUCK (not yet released) entitled, “Transference” and a poem “Just One Question Doctor, About My Termination” in, Escaping the Yellow Wallpaper, Women’s Encounters with the Mental Health Establishment.

Beth considers herself fortunate to have a supportive family and a community of friends and writers, mentors and her health, but has seen cancer take the life of so many close to her and so has spent many years working as a volunteer for her community cancer center and Hospice.

She is currently working on another novel, WAR, about Paris after WWII. When she is not writing, Beth still helps her husband in his practice, studies psychology, buys craft supplies in case she takes up making gift baskets someday, and enjoys her sons whenever they call.

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