Lana Kuhn's mother, Catherine Mooney Starrett, was Irish and her father, Lance Frederick Sansom, Australian. Kuhn lived as a child on a farm at Salt Ash, New South Wales. She worked as a stenographer in Newcastle before travelling overseas. Returning to Newcastle she qualified as a teacher and taught English and history before retiring due to ill health. She suffered break-downs and was unable to have the children she and her husband wanted. Much of her writing is based on these experiences and her interpretation of them. She and her husband Ernst Kuhn, whom she married in 1971, travelled overseas and in Australia. They lived in Sydney, Boat Harbour near Newcastle and had a property near Millbank via Kempsey in New South Wales.