Guadalupe Nettel was born in Mexico City and spent part of her childhood in the south of France. From a young age, she suffered from eye problems due to a congenital condition in one of her eyes, probably Peters' syndrome. She was consequently a victim of bullying, a fact that, according to Nettel, was one of the reasons that led her to take refuge in books and start writing.[5] She obtained a PhD in linguistics from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Her work has been translated to more than 17 languages. She is a contributor to various magazines and publications including Granta, El País, The New York Times, La Repubblica and La Stampa.
In 2007, she was named as one of the Bogotá 39, a list of the most promising young Latin American writers under the age of thirty-nine announced at the Hay Festival Bogota.[7]
She has published three English-language works of fiction with Seven Stories Press: Natural Histories (2014),[8]The Body Where I was Born (2015).,[9] and Bezoar And Other Unsettling Stories (2020). The Body Where I Was Born was recognized on the Three Percent Best Translated Book Longlist and as a Neustadt International Prize for Literature Finalist.
El matrimonio de los peces rojos, Páginas de Espuma, 2013, ISBN9786079278335
Natural Histories, translated by J. T. Lichtenstein, Seven Stories Press, 2014, ISBN9781609805517
Bezoar And Other Unsettling Stories, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine, Seven Stories Press, 2020, ISBN9781609809584
El otro lado del muelle, in Bajo la soledad del neón: Antología de cuento contemporáneo de América Latina (With authors as Liliana Colanzi and Daniel Rojas Pachas) Ecuador: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, 2021. ISBN 9789978775394.