The first time Edie Matthews’ writing made an indelible impression occurred when she was 10-years old. She came home from school one day and found a square of fresh cement in front of her house. Instead of etching her name in the inviting surface, she wrote a fable that began, "This is the home of the beautiful Princess and her three ugly brothers Larry, Curly and Moe." The editor (her mother) tried to kill the story, but too late--the cement had set.

Edie spent her early childhood with a view of the Hollywood Hills in one direction and the skyline of downtown Los Angeles in the other. At that time even the City Hall was in showbiz, featured in the opening of two television shows—“Dragnet” and "Superman."
Looking for a less nefarious environment to raise children, her mother moved the family to Santa Clara Valley. But the lure of Hollywood had already left its mark.

While attending high school, Edie worked part-time to pay for dancing lessons in preparation for her return to the Big Orange and a career in showbiz. Only the love of her life made an early entrance, swept her off her feet and married her a week after she graduated. They soon moved to Houston, where her husband, Jim, worked for Lockheed, one of the many companies supporting the NASA Space Program. During her years in Texas, Edie performed in the local community theater, gave birth to her first child and learned to say "Y'all come back."

Like the swallows that return to Capistrano, they returned to the Bay Area and eventually added three more children to the Matthews clan. One day after asking a neighbor if she'd like a glass of wa-wa, Edie realized she needed to get out more.

Settling for news in place of showbiz, Edie began hosting a news-oriented cable TV show. The set had an enormous cutout of her initials. On occasion the production crew would transpose the letters, turning it into the "ME" show. Edie did a stint at a 24-hour news-talk radio station, working as assistant editor, a job that began at four AM. After earning her journalism degree from San Jose State University, she was hired at KNTV-News, Channel 11. She covered a variety of stories ranging from the Reagan-Carter presidential election, a press conference in the Forty-niners' locker room and a visit to the Santa Clara County Jail during a sudden lockdown. After two years, day-in-day-out, Christmas, Easter and weekends, the thrill was gone.

By this time, she'd began writing personal stories--mostly humorous tales about her family, ala Erma Bombeck. Finally, she gave KNTV her notice, explaining that she needed time off to bake Christmas cookies. Dropping her Secret Service Press Pass for a Secret Clearance, Edie went to work at Lockheed as a Technical Writer, where a week off at Christmas was the norm.

She continued writing about the escapades so willingly provided by her family and began performing this new material at open mikes in local comedy clubs. For the next five years, Edie juggled a job, family and nightly treks to San Francisco's comedy clubs. By day she was a working mother and white collar professional; at night she entered a David Runyanesque world, encountering a cast of gritty characters and wacky individuals in the dingy comedy club stages throughout the Bay Area. She waited to go on stage with people like Mark Curry. Some evenings Robin Williams, Ellen Degeneres or Dana Carvey might show up at the Holy City Zoo, The Other Café or the Punchline. On one occasion the Hells Angels were in the audience. After five years of paying her dues and establishing herself on the comedy club circuit, she left Lockheed to pursue stand-up full time.

She took up dual residency, moving into an old Hollywood apartment building where twelve of the residents were standup comics. Using skills honed in the news biz, she finagled a story about her building on KCBS and KCAL TV-news and in the "LA Times," nearly parlaying the concept of cohabiting comics into a sitcom.

With her comedy neighbors, she wrote several pilot scripts, met with producers, a production company and went as far as taking a meeting with the vice president of TV development at Columbia Studios. But it’s a finicky business, and the executives keen on the idea were replaced, changed jobs or entered rehab.

During her LA days, in addition to showing up on several TV shows and a few movies (don’t blink or you’ll miss her), Edie also published a humor book called "You've Been Around Small Children Too Long When . . ." and developed a two-person show called "Mothers & Other Goddesses," which she performs at various venues, including the Gaslighter Theatre in Campbell.

When Silicon Valley was booming, she wrote jokes for "Reality Check" in the Business Monday section of the "San Jose Mercury News." Currently, she teaches Creative Writing at Santa Clara Adult Education and English at Mission College. Edie is also completing her thesis for an MFA degree in Creative Writing at SJSU.