Gillian Chan was born in England on March 29, 1954. Her father was a serving RAF officer, and the family moved every two years as her father was posted to new stations in England and Europe. Chan trained as an English teacher and taught high school English for 10 years. She settled in Dundas, Ontario, Canada in 1990. Her two collections of short stories for young adults, Golden Girl and Glory Days, both received the Hamilton and Region Arts Council Literary Award for best children's book. Her first novel, The Carved Box, was published in 2001. Her other works include A Foreign Field, An Ocean Apart - the Gold Mountain Diary of Chin Mei-ling, and The Turning.