Elspeth Cameron is the author of three award-winning biographies: Hugh MacLennan: A Writer's Life (1981), Irving Layton: A Portrait (1985), and Earle Birney: A Life (1994). Her 1997 memoir No Previous Experience: A Memoir of Love and Change won the W. O. Mitchell Literary Prize. Her book And Beauty Answers: The Life of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle (2007), was shortlisted for the 2008 Toronto Book Awards. She was also the recipient of the UBC Medal for Canadian Biography in 1981 and the City of Vancouver Book Award in 1995. She has taught English and Canadian Studies at Concordia University and the University of Toronto, and was a professor in the English Language and Literature Department at Brock University.