HOME	SPLIT ENDS	EVENTS	D.C. GUIDEBOOKS	CREDITS	ABOUT BETH

	Biography of Beth Rubin Beth was born sometime between the Crash of '29 and "Jailhouse Rock." She (mis)spent her youth in Maplewood, N.J. where she was expelled from kindergarten for spilling chocolate milk and refusing to nap. In grammar school she began writing fanciful stories. It beat hell out of long division and Civil Defense drills. When not writing or nodding off, the budding author disrupted class with her smart-aleck remarks and warmed the bench outside the principal's office. She wrote in junior high school on the girls' room walls, on her lunch bags, in her Latin notebook-- anywhere to avoid memorizing battle dates and theorems. (More than 40 years later, she has yet to see the need for the hypotenuse of anything.) Beth joined the high school newspaper and yearbook staffs to avoid homework and hockey practice. Her extra-curricular activities included acing lunch and smoking undetected in the parking lot. As a senior, her thoughtful essay, The Eva Braun I Wish I'd Known, earned her a spot in the freshman class at Syracuse University, despite single-digit SAT scores. She made the Dean's Other List at Syracuse and spent two years with chronic frostbite and seasonal affective disorder. Beth transferred to GWU, where the climate was more agreeable. There she grabbed a B.A. and Mrs. in short order. About the time LBJ was unveiling his gall bladder incision to the media, Beth landed a job writing press releases and correspondence for a trade association run by southern white males who thought she'd be thrilled to work like a man for below minimum wage. Evenings she wrote to avoid ironing and telling off her boss. After four years she dropped out of the D.C. power scene and dropped in on Motherhood. During this period her Smith Corona found a home behind the diaper can and she sharpened her safety-pinning skills. Soon as her kids were potty-trained she bought a box of red pencils and began to freelance as a copy editor. Working in a robe suited her. She could bake cookies and do her nails between completing assignments and playing Candyland. Both kids in school, she traded her robe for jeans and joined the staff of a community newspaper. There she learned to write headlines and edit stories while scarfing two glazed doughnuts at a time. On a slow news day her first piece was published. She was hooked. Like Narcissus, Beth fell in love with her byline. She began to contribute features on a variety of subjects-- family topics, humor and travel among them. She became the paper's official dance writer and unofficial humorist. Pushing a red pencil pleased her less and less, and writing pleased her more and more. So she left to set up an office next to the washer/dryer. Voila! She had become a freelance writer. In the intervening years she has: written hundreds of features for D.C. area newspapers and magazines; reported on dance for several D.C. area papers; created more than 80 exotic casseroles with mushroom soup and canned onion rings; ghost-written speeches; created hundreds of one-of-a-kind poems for her business, Rhymes For All Reasons; conceived and published three guidebooks and contributed to a fourth; folded 2.3 million sheets (and still can't get the corners to match); generated copy for newsletters, brochures, magazines and dot coms; moved to Annapolis, MD; guest hosted at www.frommers.com, "Ask the Expert," about Washington, D.C.; flossed 437,021 times; done media relations and strategy, outreach and event planning; married off her kids; started the local chapter of PMS (post-menopausal singles) Anonymous; became a grandmother four times; published an award-winning novel, "Split Ends," and gone through seven bathrobes. Currently, she's marketing "Split Ends " and writing revenue-producing copy for anyone who will pay within 30 days. (Hey, she likes to eat.) Between deadlines, you'll find her in a new robe, slaving away on a second novel. This she does to avoid balancing her checkbook.
Contact Beth at: beth@bethrubinauthor.com.