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Anthony J. Mohr is a multi-award-winning author and distinguished jurist whose career uniquely spans public service, literature, and cultural insight. He served for twenty-seven years as a judge on the Los Angeles Superior Court and also sat as a judge pro tem on the California Court of Appeal, experience that lends depth, empathy, and authority to his writing. His acclaimed memoir, Every Other Weekend – Coming of Age With Two Different Dads, has earned ten book awards, including multiple first-place honors and 2025 Memoir of the Year from Australia’s Chrysalis BREW Project.

A six-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Mohr’s work has appeared in respected literary journals including the Cumberland River Review, DIAGRAM, Hippocampus Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, North Dakota Quarterly, War, Literature & the Arts, and ZYZZYVA. A fellow of Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, he serves as a managing editor of the Harvard ALI Social Impact Review.

He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wesleyan University and holds a JD from Columbia University. A multi-faceted talent, he also performed with The L.A. Connection, an improv comedy theater. This one-on-one interview explores Mohr’s life, career, and the personal story behind Every Other Weekend — Coming of Age With Two Different Dads.

Tell us about Every Other Weekend — Coming of Age With Two Different Dads.

In Every Other Weekend – Coming of Age With Two Different Dads, I tell the story of growing up in 1950s–60s Southern California, a time when divorce was rare, quietly scandalous, and deeply confusing for a child caught in between. I was the only son of Gerald Mohr, a charismatic radio star whose Hollywood career slowly slid toward the margins, and Stanley Dashew, a brilliant, conservative businessman whose business machines helped shape the modern credit card industry.

One weekend, I sailed on my stepfather’s fifty-eight-foot catamaran, surrounded by wealth, order, and unspoken expectations. Next weekend, my father’s second wife told me they were “poor.” I spent those weekends in the unpredictable orbit of an actor who never stopped believing the next big break was just ahead but in the meantime relied on cash from “unemployment.” Moving back and forth between these two worlds, Hollywood fantasy and corporate reality, I searched for stability, belonging, and a sense of who I was supposed to become.

This memoir is not just about divorce. It is about fatherhood, loyalty, and learning to live in essentially two different cultures. With humor, candor, and clear-eyed reflection, I revisit the moments that shaped me and the emotional balancing act of loving two men who could not have been more different, grateful that, in the end, no one ever forced me to choose.

Every Other Weekend is my story, but it is also for anyone who has ever grown up between two homes, two parents, or two versions of the truth.

What inspired you to write Every Other Weekend?

The idea for this book had been quietly following me for years. A close family friend who worked as a literary agent first encouraged me to write the book while I was practicing law, and later renewed the suggestion after I became a judge. But the demands of courtrooms and trials always took precedence. It wasn’t until I attended a Community of Writers workshop, where a seminar leader echoed that same insistence, that I realized this was a story I had to tell.

How did your background and experience influence your writing?

My life has always revolved around words, on the page and on the bench. I helped edit my high school and college newspapers, and today I serve as an editor for the California judges’ magazine and as a managing editor of Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative Social Impact Review. Coupled with more than two decades on the Los Angeles Superior Court, that background naturally led me to memoir, where precision, reflection, and truth matter.

What is one message you would like readers to remember?

If there’s one message I hope stays with readers, it’s that children absorb far more from than we realize, and with the right support, those experiences can become sources of strength and insight rather than scars. Therapy can play an important role in ensuring this. For me, growing up between two households taught me how to navigate different worlds, listen deeply, and understand opposing points of view, skills that proved invaluable in shaping my career as a judge.

Purchasing the Book

Every Other Weekend — Coming of Age With Two Different Dads has received positive reviews from well-known literary organizations, authors, and critics around the world. Kirkus Reviews writes, “A touching and earnest remembrance that celebrates the workaday and extraordinary experiences of a child of divorce.” In addition, Book Excellence writes, “A powerful memoir that distills the emotional truth of growing up between two fathers into something both intimate and universal. With clarity and moral depth, Mohr transforms memory into a lasting reflection on identity, resilience, and the meaning of family.”

The book is available for sale on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Readers are encouraged to purchase their copy today: https://www.amazon.com/Every-Other-Weekend-Anthony-Mohr/dp/1646639022

To connect with Anthony and learn more about his work, visit: www.anthonyjmohr.com. You can also find him on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

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