Life
Ella Guru was born in Ohio, USA. She did a commercial art course at Fort Hayes Career Center (1982–84) and attended Columbus College of Art and Design (1984–86), which she left because of "all the conceptual crap". She graduated in fine arts from Ohio State University (1988–89), where she received the Visual Arts Award.
1990–91, she worked as a go-go dancer and stripper, and travelled to Africa and India, then for the next year lived an Islamic lifestyle in an Algerian household in Islington, London, where she was a waitress in a Mexican restaurant. She has lived in London since this time. In 1996, she rode a bicycle to Lithuania, and met Sexton Ming in London, after borrowing his lipstick. In 1997, she worked as a web site designer. In 2001, she married Ming on a Dorset cliff top; they wore drag. Her daughter Lucy was born in 2004.
She has been an habituée of fetish clubs, where she used to spank men, whom she terms "Tory politicians". She had lunch in New York with Quentin Crisp, who said she was "weird". Guru's pseudonym is taken from a Captain Beefheart song on the album Trout Mask Replica.
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