Mara Švel-Gamiršek was born in Sremska Mitrovica, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary (today Vojvodina, Serbia), 3 January 1900, in the family of Šokci Croats.
She continued her education in gymnasium in Sušak, and after that, she went to study medicine.
She began publishing her works in early 1940s, at Matica hrvatska.
In wider sense, she belonged to the phenomenon of žensko šokačko pismo ("female literature of Šokci").
The elementary school in Vrbanja, in eastern Croatia, is named after Mara Švel-Gamiršek.