She was born in 1947 and grew up with her influential family in Cebu City, on the Island of Cebu, Philippines. Cebu appears in her short stories and novel as Ubec (Cebu spelled backwards). Her idyllic childhood is associated with her father, an engineer who was already in his fifties when she was born. Brainard was the youngest of four children. Her father died when she was nine. To cope with the loss of the father figure, she started writing journals at the age of nine. Her writing eventually evolved into essays, then short stories, then novels.

She is the author and editor of over a dozen books, 250 published essays and four-dozen stories. From 1968 to 1981, she worked in the area of communications as a documentary scriptwriter, fundraiser and as an assistant director for a non-profit organization that included responsibilities in public relations and development. Since 1981, she has worked as a freelance writer. She has taught in the Animation Department at the University of Southern California. She teaches creative writing at the UCLA-Extension Writers’ Program. She once wrote a bi-monthly column, Filipina American Perspective for the Philippine American News, a newspaper in Los Angeles from 1982 to 1988. She was a founding member and past officer of Philippine American Women Writers and Artists (PAWWA). She is a member of PEN America.

As an author, editor, and teacher, Brainard is like the epic storyteller, Yvonne, in her internationally-acclaimed novel, When the Rainbow Goddess Wept. She promotes Filipino-American writers and Filipino-American literature so that other readers may learn, recover and remember. Her works can be found in periodicals such as Focus Philippines, Philippine Graphic, Mr. and Mrs. Magazine, Katipunan, Amerasia Journal, Bamboo Ridge and The California Examiner among many others. Her stories have been anthologized in the pages of Making Waves (1989), Forbidden Fruit (1992), Songs of Ourselves (1994), On a Bed of Rice (1995), "Pinay: Autobiographical Narratives by Women Writers, 1926-1998" (Ateneo 2000), "Asian American Literature" (Glencoe McGraw-Hill 2001) and many others.

Brainard immigrated to America in 1968 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1972. She eventually married Lauren Brainard, whom she had met in the Philippines when he was serving in the U.S. Peace Corps. The couple settled in Santa Monica, California where they have three sons namely Christopher, Alexander, and Andrew.