About Amy
More About Amy
Amy S. Peele was born and raised in the Chicago area. She enjoyed a successful 35-year career in Organ Transplantation, retiring from the University of California-San Francisco in 2014. Her lived experiences provide rich, authentic backdrops for her books, many of which have received national acclaim.
Amy also has a love for comedy and improv, graduating from Chicago’s Second City Players Workshop in 1985, and later studying Improv at Bay Area Theatre Sports in San Francisco. Amy’s sense of humor comes through in all her writing and speaking engagements.
Amy met her architect/artist husband, Mark Schatz (schatzworks.com), through his mother, who was her student at a transplant coordinator course. Mark and Amy were married in 1987 and have two children: Gracie is the head chef at 18 Reasons, a non-profit community culinary school in the Bay Area (18reasons.org), while Bennett works in the digital sound industry, enjoys building bikes and playing music, and recently welcomed Amy’s first grandchild into the world.
In addition to writing bestselling books, Amy is a highly sought-after speaker, a certified Hatha & Laughter Yoga instructor, and a meditation enthusiast. She lives in Northern California and will forever be a die-hard Cubs fan.
Early Transplant Career at
University of Chicago 1977
I have been a nurse since 1974 and started my transplant career in 1977 at the University of Chicago. I was fortunate to learn all the aspects of organ donation and kidney transplantation while working with Dr. Frank Stuart and partnered with him on all the activities listed below:
- Evaluated patients to be listed for a kidney transplant
- Orchestrated all the events that culminated in kidney donation including speaking to donor families of a patient that had been declared brain dead
- Assisted in the recovery of the kidneys in the operating room
- Called patients when a kidney became available
- Worked up living kidney donors and presented them to the team
- Rounded twice a day with the transplant team
- Followed up the patients in the post-kidney transplant clinic
Talking to donor families who have just lost a loved one is the most intense and real interaction I have ever had in my life. Donor families are the most courageous and generous people in the world. What still saddens me to this day is the number of people who die waiting for hearts, livers, kidneys & lungs. While writing my transplant murder mysteries I am careful to recycle all the organs and tissues from each of the victims.
If there were a 12 step program for addiction to transplantation, organ donation and immunology, I would be a regular at the meetings. The most satisfying moments of my career were when I called patients to tell them we had a kidney for them. Imagine receiving a call like that after waiting years and years on dialysis, watching your body and mind deteriorate.
Amy was featured in the journal, Progress in Transplantation, Vol 23, No. 4, December 2013.
