Curtis J Austin was born in 1933 in Missoula, Montana, the sixth of seven children. He graduated from high school in Missoula, and after working for a number of months at the Mercantile, decided college was preferable to working, enrolling at the last minute at what was then Montana State University (now the University of Montana). After completing a degree in business, Curt was drafted and joined the Navy in 1955. He spent nearly two years in the Pacific stationed aboard the Aircraft Carrier USS Yorktown, spending much of his time at sea reading history and literature from the ships library. He returned to Missoula after a short stint as a clerk at the State Department, and earned his Master's Degree in Education. Curt began his teaching career in 1960 at Frontier Junior High School in Moses Lake, Washington, where he taught language arts and history. In 1970, he moved from Frontier to Moses Lake High School, where he taught English for the next 22 years until his retirement in 1992. During his tenure at the High School, he was a creative teacher, who pioneered many different courses such as "Psychological Literature".

Over the years he has heard back from many of his students about their memorable time in his class. Curt also taught English 101 and 102 at Big Bend Community College and English as a Second Language through the Japanese Agricultural Training Program.Curt loves opera, theater and classical music, going to New York twice during his teaching career on National Endowment for the Humanities scholarships to study literature and drama. He was one of the early proponents of Columbia Basin Allied Arts, and served as executive director there for a year while on a sabbatical from teaching.