Rosa Guy was raised in the USA from the age of seven and now lives in New York. She immigrated to Harlem, New York in 1932. Soon after her parents, Henry and Audrey Cuthbert, died, she and her sister went to many foster homes. She quit school at age fourteen and took a job to help support her family.

During World War II she joined the American Negro Theatre. She studied theatre and writing at the University of New York. Most of her books are about the dependability of family members that care and love each other. Her works include: Bird at My Window (1966), Children of Longing (1971), The Friends (1973), Ruby (1976), Edith Jackson (1978), The Disappearance (1979), Mirror of Her Own (1981), A Measure of Time (1983), and New Guys Around the Block (1983), Paris, Pee Wee and Big Dog (1984), My Love, My Love, or the Peasant Girl (1985), And I Heard a Bird Sing (1987).

She is divorced from Warner Guy, with son Warner Guy Jr.