She was born to William Francis Channing and Mary Jane (née Tarr) on December 27, 1862 in Providence, Rhode Island.

[1][2][3] Channing moved from Rhode Island, to Southern California in 1885, as part of a successful bid to cure her lung troubles.

Gilman and daughter Katharine moved with Grace from Providence to Pasadena, where the Channing family owned a home, in the fall of 1888.

She became an associate editor of The Land of Sunshine (later Out West), and in her tenure as a writer and poet contributor to the publication, advocated for an increased reliance on Mediterranean practices for Los Angelenos.

These stories were "didactic and dramatic portraits of women who found happiness in self-sacrificing love for and dependence on good men, or who nobly endured the weakness of their partners and lived and suffered happily ever after."

[2] When Channing lived in Rome in the early 1900s, she helped edit and compile Elihu Vedder's autobiography in exchange for financial support.

The stories and poetry she wrote at this time were very conservative and critical of exemption from military service, encouraging the war effort and often idealizing the sacrifice of the wives and mothers of enlisted men.