Diane Mehta was born in Frankfurt, grew up in Bombay and New Jersey, studied in Boston, and now makes her home in New York City.

Books include Happier Far: Essays (UGA Press, 2025), two poetry collections, Tiny Extravaganzas(Arrowsmith Press, 2023), Forest with Castanets(Four Way Books, 2019), and a poetics guide, How to Write Poetry (B&N Books, 2005).

Her work has been recognized by the Café Royal Cultural Foundation and the Peter Heinegg Literary Award, and by fellowships at Civitella Ranieri, Bogliasco, Yaddo, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She was an editor at A Public Space, PEN America, and Guernica. She publishes in The New Yorker, NYT, Times Literary Supplement, WSJ, Harvard Review, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and A Public Space.

Mehta is poet in residence with the New Chamber Ballet in NYC. She was a judge for the 2024 Derek Walcott Prize and is a judge for the 2025-2028 Silvers-Dudley Prizes for literary criticism, arts writing, and journalism. Mehta has collaborated with musicians to invent new ways of working through sound together, and she is immersed in a lifelong collaborative reading of Dante’s Commedia with the cellist and composer Frances-Marie Uitti and the porcelain artist Mary Carlson.

Mehta is represented by Jennifer Lyons. Click here for editing services.