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 study of technique, How to Write Poetry (B&N Books, 2005).

Her work has been recognized by fellowships at Civitella Ranieri and Yaddo, the Café Royal Cultural Foundation, and the Peter Heinegg Literary Award. She was an editor at A Public Space, PEN America, and Guernica. She publishes poetry, essays, and criticism for The New Yorker, NYT, TLS, WSJ, Harvard Review, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Kenyon Review, VQR, and A Public Space.

Mehta has collaborated with musicians to invent a new ways of working through sound together, and with two visual artists. She’s immersed in a lifelong collaborative reading of Dante’s Commedia, and she is poet in residence with the New Chamber Ballet in New York City. (Read a poem about one of the dancers in the New Yorker.) She was a judge for the 2024 Derek Walcott Prize with Arrowsmith Press and for the 2025-2028 Silvers-Dudley Prizes for literary criticism, arts writing, and journalism. Mehta is represented by Jennifer Lyons at Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency. For editorial services, please click here.