About
Leland Austin grew up in Texas on a farm, chopping cotton and feeding cows and chickens. At 22 years of age, he flew off to Yemen with his first wife to work in a Baptist hospital for two years. Returning to Austin, Texas, he spent two years assisting in a preschool classroom. He then went to San Francisco and obtained a Masters in Creative Writing from SF State. Once there, he stayed on for twenty more years, writing stories, novels and plays, working as a carpenter, and finally beginning his career as a Rolfer (someone who works the fascia of the human body with his own hands). Mekiah was born there, the child of Leland and his second wife. About eleven years ago, they all moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Mekiah’s sister Aleyah was born. Leland now lives in a sweet house on Miner Street with his two children and a loving woman, Lucia, and her son Andrew.
Mekiah Austin was born in San Francisco. He is presently finishing sixth grade at Slauson Middle School. He has always loved to draw. If you stacked up all of his drawings it would probably reach a billion million trillion jillion quadrillion miles high (that’s what he’d call an exaggeration). He has taken a few art classes, not even a million. Mekiah loves to draw little cartoons and comic strips, and what he really likes in his cartoons is lots of red blood. His favorite classes in school are reading and science.
Aleyah Austin, Mekiah’s almost-9-year-old sister, provided ample material for the character of the boy’s sister in the story of The Boy and The Shark. She also loves to draw as well as create things from all the “stuff” around—from flowers to string and paper, which she loves to cut up in itty bitty pieces to make some wonderful pieces of art. And she admits that from time to time she might enjoy annoying her brother, but of course, she feels he annoys her as well.