A life­long learn­er and edu­ca­tor in high school and uni­ver­si­ty set­tings, the author, Joan Moran, earned master’s degrees in The­ater and Edu­ca­tion. She went on to teach act­ing, the­ater his­to­ry, and stage move­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Neva­da, Las Vegas. She was the Found­ing Artis­tic Direc­tor of The Mead­ows Play­house. Five years lat­er, Joan found­ed and was the artis­tic direc­tor of the Mead­ows Play­house, Las Vegas first year-round the­ater. Her inter­est in film led her to Los Ange­les where she became a pro­duc­ing fel­low at the Amer­i­can Film Insti­tute. Writ­ing cap­tured Joan’s imag­i­na­tion and after grad­u­at­ing from AFI, she wrote screen­plays for the next 15 years in Hol­ly­wood. Lat­er, Joan became a renowned moti­va­tion­al speak­er and blog­ger com­mand­ing stages and audi­ence atten­tion with humor and her wide breath of expe­ri­ences. She served as a yoga and med­i­ta­tion instruc­tor at UCLA as well as the VA Admin­is­tra­tion. In her mid-60s she once again found pas­sion in writ­ing books. She began with her mem­oir, 60, Sex, & Tan­go, Con­fes­sions of A Beat­nik Boomer, and expand­ed her writ­ing jour­ney with her sixth book, a his­tor­i­cal mem­oir, Sud­den­ly Jew­ish: The Life and Times of My Jew­ish Moth­er.