Leanna Gaskins spent her early years on a Kansas wheat farm without electricity, gas, or inside plumbing. She went to school in Dodge City and then to the University of Kansas, transferring when invited to a program in economics at Rampart College, in the mountains of Colorado. She moved to Los Angeles where she spent several years and married. She graduated as a Regents Scholar from the University of California, Berkeley, and earned a Ph.D. in Linguistics there, applying modern formal linguistic theory to the ancient Egyptian language written in hieroglyphic, which she also taught to a generation of UC Berkeley Egyptology students. Anticipating the coming importance of personal computers, she moved to Silicon Valley to join very early startup software companies as a teacher, writer, and manager of writing groups. During this same period she researched railroad history in travels over all the western states, and was one of a small team who rebuilt and restored the long-dormant Southern Pacific 2472 steam locomotive. She retired very early and moved with her husband to central London where they lived and studied for ten years, after which they returned to live in San Francisco. She has written poetry since her early college years.