Anara

studied writing with Kathleen Agena at the Urban Gateways Young Writers Workshop of Chicago, at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts with Norman Corwin, at Columbia College Story Workshop, at St. Joseph’s College with Stu Dybek, at Bread Loaf Writers Conference with Robert Cohen and Alix Ohlin, and at the Community of Writers. She was awarded the John Crowe Ransom Prize in poetry from Kenyon College. Anara has worked as a small town librarian, public health consultant, editor, self-defense instructor, and produce buyer for a food co-operative, among other jobs.

Her creative writing has been published in The Ear, Gold Man Review, Voices 2020, Under the Gum Tree, the anthology Twenty Twenty: 43 Stories From a Year Like No Other and elsewhere.  She also reviews books for Manhattan Book Review, Portland Book Review, San Francisco Book Review, LibraryThing, and Seattle Book Review. She and her sister, Gay Guard-Chamberlin, perform their poetry together as Sibling Revelry.

The Authors Guild published an interview with Anara in March 2022 after the publication of Like a Complete Unknown. The Hyde Park [Chicago] Herald published an interview in April 2022. In 2023, Anara was a judge for the Benecia Love Poetry Contest.