Myrna Lakshmi Gill was born in Manila, Philippines, on May 24, 1943. She is the third daughter of Karam, a Panjabi Indian man, and Wilfred Poso Gill, a Spanish woman born in the Philippines. They met at the University of the Philippines and married despite opposition from relatives. Gill’s father was a businessman, and the family lived in comfort. Gill grew up in Manila, where she attended a Catholic convent school. After her high school graduation, she moved to the United States. She attended Western Washington University in Bellingham, where she completed her undergraduate studies and won a poetry prize at the School Literary Contest. She then moved to Canada in 1964 to pursue her master’s at the University of British Columbia. Though she completed her coursework for her PhD at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, she could not continue her research work due to her father’s death.