María José Gutiérrez Lera was born in Huesca in 1967. Both her parents were teachers, and from a very young age she was fascinated by books, at eight she wrote her first story for her little brother, and soon started on poetry that amazed all the adults around her. She loved to read and her inspiration came from the children's literature of the time: "I got out of bed with a book and started reading over breakfast. That way I didn't have to talk in the morning." Her family was full of painters and artists, and she grew up surrounded by images, which perhaps drove her to study art history and drove her professional life to teaching photography. Her teaching and her own children kept her away from writing for a while, but she later returned to it, carrying her world of images with her in her writing techniques.