Born in Fontainebleau, France, Anna Gural-Migdal has studied at the Université de Paris IV (France) and the Université de Montréal (Canada). In 1991, she received her Ph.D. from the Department of French Studies at the Université de Montréal. Her thesis, entitled "Fonction et Fonctionnement de la métaphore dans Le Ventre de Paris d’Émile Zola," was awarded a Mention Très Bien by the Jury.

Presently, as a Full Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta, she teaches French Literature and Cinema. Prior to this, she was Assistant Professor in the Department of French Studies at York University (Toronto, Canada) and Lecturer in the Département de littératures et de langues du monde at the Université de Montréal.

Specializing in Émile Zola and worldwide Naturalism, Anna Gural-Migdal also conducts research in semiotics, literary theory, and film theory. Her research underscores the value of interdisciplinary approaches, particularly the relationship between literature and cinema. She speaks five languages fluently.

She has received a number of grants, fellowships, and distinctions: "Fondation Birks," "Bourse d'excellence" from Université de Montréal, "Ministère des Affaires intergouvernementales du Québec," "Heritage Canada," "Research Grant" from York University, "Harriet Winspear-Sheila Watson Fellowship" from the University of Alberta, and "SSHRC Grants." She also received a Grant from the Italian government and the Università di Urbino (Italy) to continue her studies in Semiotics.

Anna Gural-Migdal has published around one hundred articles on Zola, Huysmans, Mirbeau, Artaud, Duras, francophone literature of Quebec and the Maghreb, popular culture, in addition to Italian, French, and Canadian cinema. Her book Le Cinéma de Paul Tana. Parcours critiques (in coll. with Filippo Salvatore), was published in 1997 (Montréal: Editions Balzac). She is the editor of a collection of essays entitled L'écriture du féminin chez Zola et dans la fiction naturaliste / Writing the Feminine in Zola and Naturalist Fiction (Berne: Peter Lang, 2003; 2nd ed. 2004). With Robert Singer, she co-edited a collection of essays entitled Zola and Film: Essays in the Art of Adaptation, with a Foreword by Brigitte Émile-Zola, which has come out with MacFarland (2005), in New York. In 2006, with Carolyn Snipes-Hoyt, she completed a book with the title Zola et le naturalisme en Europe et aux Amériques: généricité, intertextualité et influences published by Edwin Mellen Press. Her most recent work is a monograph entitled L’Écrit-Écran des Rougon-Macquart. Conceptions iconiques et filmiques du roman chez Zola (Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2012). In September 2013, a book entitled Re-Reading Zola and Worldwide Naturalism was released in honour of her work and for sustaining the dynamic international research group, AIZEN, for nearly 20 years: http://www.cambridgescholars.com/re-reading-zola-and-worldwide-naturalism-13

Anna Gural-Migdal is the President of the Association internationale Zola et Naturalisme (AIZEN) and the Editor of the International Review, Excavatio. She is the recipient of the 2013 University of Alberta Faculty of Arts Undergraduate Teaching Award. In July 2013, she was knighted in the Order of the Academic Palms by France’s Minister of Education: https://uofa.ualberta.ca/modern-languages-and-cultural-studies/mlcs-news/news/2013/august/drannagural-migdalhonoured.