Anara Guard grew up in Chicago. Her first job was at age nine, tending the corner newsstand for a penny per minute while Carl the Newspaper Man ate his lunch at Steinways. She later worked in a thrift shop, pharmacy, check clearinghouse, food co-op, community radio station, small town library, as a maid at a resort on the shores of Lake Michigan, and women's self-defense teacher. She graduated from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science in Boston.

Anara studied writing at the Urban Gateways Young Writers Workshop of Chicago with Kathleen Agena, the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts with Norman Corwin, Columbia College Story Workshop, St. Joseph's College with Stu Dybek, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference with Robert Cohen and Alix Ohlin. In 2010, Back Pages Publishing issued her first collection of short stories, The Sound of One Body. Her poetry has been published in Convergence and Late Peaches, an anthology of Sacramento poets. After spending the first half of her life in the Midwest and the second half in New England, she is enjoying the third half in Sacramento with her husband and cat, Dave and Mercury.