Amy Jo in brief
Amy Jo Utstein is the author of the Muir Beach Mystery series, set in the Northern California coastal village she has called home for over a decade. A former literary manager and dramaturg at Berkeley Rep and senior assistant dean at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, she holds an MFA in Japanese Theater — a credential she always suspected would come in handy eventually. She lives in Muir Beach, California, where her fiction and her backyard are essentially the same place.
My Story
I was supposed to be important.
Beneath my flowing signature in every high school yearbook, I wrote, “You should keep this signature because when I’m the first woman Jewish President, you can say you knew me.” No joke. One might think that inheriting the unfulfilled dreams of countless generations would be a burden but, as you can see from the yearbook example, I was up to the challenge. I was the smart one and the family agreed I was destined for great things. Now, don’t get me wrong, I was also a complete disappointment. I was too loud, too bossy, too messy; too much and not enough.
Perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear that I found myself in High School Drama. We drama kids got the attention and adoration we desperately needed on the stage, and we made friends who thought being “too much” was the goal. I went on to study theater at Brandeis University and spent my young adulthood directing plays in San Francisco and Chicago, meeting fun and interesting people living creative lives, and smoking a lot of weed (I gave up on running for President, clearly).
While I was in Chicago, I met my husband, Steve who had moved there from New Zealand to become a famous rock musician. (Fun fact - Steve's last name was originally Utting and my last name was originally Weinstein.) From Chicago, Steve and I moved to Oahu where I received an MFA in Directing from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa with a speciality in Japanese theater.
Once Maud was born, my priorities changed. Working a soul-sucking day job to have enough money to do theater on the side didn't mesh well with the parent I wanted to be. So I ended up with an art-adjacent career. I worked for Rhino Records, Berkeley Rep, and UC Berkeley and am currently fortunate enough to work full time on the mystery novel that started percolating during COVID.
I love this post-childrearing, still young-enough-to-have-fun part of life. I have time to read, cook, watch TV, play my weird Japanese puzzles, go down rabbit holes online, hang out with my friends, and occasionally get high. In some ways I feel like I'm in my 20s again, but I've already found my romantic partner and have more money to spend.
Of course the downside is that I usually end up being too tired to go out, I never get carded, and it's a rare (but highly appreciated) experience to get chatted up in bars. Back in the day it was annoying when some idiot would sit next to me and offer to buy me a drink, but now I can live off one of those encounters for a month.
But generally speaking, I thank the flying spaghetti monster for this life.
Ramen!