María Isabel Carvajal Quesada was born on 15 January 1887 in San José, Costa Rica, and attended the Superior School for Girls, graduating in 1904.

In 1918, she published her first novel, En una silla de ruedas (In a Wheelchair), which portrays national customs and manners through the eyes of a paralyzed boy who grows up to become an artist, with a strong dose of sentimentalism and intimations of the bohemian life of San Jose.

[6] She was joined by fellow teachers María Alfaro de Mata, Odilia Castro Hidalgo, Adela Ferreto, Angela García, Luisa González, Stella Peralta, Emilia Prieto, Lilia Ramos, Esther Silva and Hortensia Zelaya, who had been radicalized at the Normal School (teacher's college), to challenge a society built on privilege and the roles of women being confined to home, marriage, and motherhood.

[9] As her politics and activities became more radical, Lyra was removed from her teaching posts[3] and in 1948, at the conclusion of the Costa Rican Civil War, when José Figueres Ferrer outlawed the communist party[10] she was sent into exile in Mexico.

[13] The Miravalles Quintet premiered in 2011 at the Teatro Nacional its new work entitled Homenaje a Carmen Lyra, an interdisciplinary chamber show, original Costa Rican composition, painting, literature, narration and dance-inspired by the author's writings.