Born and raised in Delaware, MB Austin’s childhood getaways all took her to the water: days at the blistery beach, weeks on the chilly Maine coast, and never enough time sailing on the Susquehanna River. Then she headed south for four long years, making good trouble at Duke University before skedaddling to the Left Coast.
Upon reaching the Emerald City (aka Seattle), she got a law degree and tried it out as a civil rights attorney representing individuals with disabilities, while publishing her first short fiction and poetry with NorthBiNorthwest.
Finding it surprisingly hard to make rent as a lawyer, MB became a Mild Mannered Civil Servant by day and a Guardian Angel by night, volunteering with Seattle Q-Patrol, run primarily by and for the Queer community.
MB was saved from becoming the Queen of Paperwork by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which loved lawyers who no longer practice law. She began by making grants to Tribal governments, which led to collaborating with them on groundbreaking air quality regulations. Later she put your tax dollars to work fighting climate change, promoting environmental justice, and demonstrating sustainability. Which led to a loooong sun break in California, finally living on the water—in a floating home.
MB’s California dreaming spawned Maji Rios, a contemporary badass multilingual lesbian crimefighter with an electric motorcycle. And an alternate 1850’s questionably utopian, genderqueer, solar-powered Mediterranean without motorcycles.
Upon her return to Seattle, MB took a Mild Mannered Civil Servant job with no connection to saving the planet. Downshifting gave her the bandwidth to publish the first three Maji Rios thrillers (Bold Strokes Books), a Maji novella, and an assortment of short stories, including the first few genderqueer solarpunk Trencadis Tales.
MB’s most recent novel, Blursday’s Revenge, borrows bits and pieces from all of her lived experiences. The post-pandemic, not-cozy but bizarrely culinary mystery set on the banks of the Susquehanna is MB’s most serious, most personal, and hopefully funniest work to date. It is also her first novel written entirely from home, in pajamas.
MB hangs out online @mbaustinauthor on Twitter, FB, and Insta, periodically cleaning house at www.mbaustin.me
