Gloria Guardia (1940 – 13 May 2019) was a Panamanian novelist, essayist and journalist whose works received recognition in Latin America, Europe, Australia and Japan.
Her mother, Olga Zeledon, a native of Nicaragua, was the youngest daughter of the country's national hero, Benjamin Zeledón and his wife Ester Ramirez Jerez.
In 1958, Guardia graduated from Roycemorel-School, an independent, nonsectarian college preparatory school located in Evanston, Illinois.
That year, she presented a dissertation for a Ph.D. degree on Comparative Literature: Estudio sobre el pensamiento poético de Pablo Antonio Cuadra, which was revised for publication at Editorial Gredos, Madrid.
In 2007, the Rockefeller Foundation selected her to be one of their novelist-in-residence at The Bellagio Center, where she wrote her novel El jardín de las cenizas, third part of the trilogy Maramargo.