Luciland was created in 1999 by Rachel Pearson & Mieke Eerkens, two friends and formerly awkward children who met in the 80’s at a birthday party in line for the Slip n’ Slide™. The two became fast friends & spent many hours after school drawing characters on butcher paper & cutting out paper dolls who each got unique backstories.
 

As young adults, Rachel and Mieke both found themselves living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mieke getting her BA in Creative Writing at SF State University, and Rachel her BFA in Graphic Design at California College of the Arts. Old habits die hard, and soon Mieke began to invent stories & personalities for the colorful characters that Rachel casually sketched for class. Before long, the two embarked on a project to introduce the world to a cast of characters who reflected real children in the world, the kind of children rarely seen in children’s books back then.

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Full of youthful optimism, they sent their book manuscripts off to publishers, but the world wasn’t quite ready for characters with two dads & disabilities & gender-stereotype-defying characteristics. They got great feedback from editors who loved what they were doing but...they worried about it being too radical. Thankfully, the past 24 years have seen huge leaps in acceptance, & the world now seems primed for a children’s book series like Luciland. It’s not radical anymore, but still very needed.

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Now middle age and living thousands of miles apart, but still close friends, Rachel & Mieke have decided that Luciland deserves a second chance. Rachel’s two children and their friends all love what she reads to them. Mieke is a published author & craves the lighthearted, humorous writing that Luciland offers. All around them are the signs that it’s time to reintroduce the world to Luciland. 

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Mieke Eerkens is a writer who graduated from San Francisco State University with a BA in Creative Writing and a minor in Cinema, and the University of Iowa’s MFA program in Nonfiction. She is a writing instructor and has published fiction and nonfiction in many different venues, including a book with Macmillan/Picador. She currently lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, with frequent visits to her native California, where her family lives.

Rachel Pearson is an artist and illustrator who spent over a decade designing and running a popular organic children’s clothing line, Speesees. She has BA in Psychology from UC Santa Cruz and a BFA in Graphic Design from California College of the Arts, and is currently pursuing a MA in Expressive Arts Therapy at CIIS, when she isn't busy making art /books & chasing her children around with her husband on their apple farm in Sebastopol, CA.