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 an essay collection (University of Georgia Press, 2025), two poetry collections, Tiny Extravaganzas (Arrowsmith Press, 2023), Forest with Castanets (Four Way Books, 2019), and a literary guide, How to Write Poetry (2005). She is at work on a novel set in 1946-7 Mumbai that folds in events from the partitions of India and Palestine.

Her work has been recognized by the Peter Heinegg Literary Award, the Café Royal Cultural Foundation, and fellowships at Civitella Ranieri and Yaddo.

She was the founding managing editor of A Public Space, launched and edited Glossolalia for PEN America to publish writing from traditionally underrepresented languages, and was executive nonfiction editor for Guernica.

She publishes poetry, essays, and criticism for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Harvard Review, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Kenyon Review, The Guardian, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, and A Public Space.

She is collaborating with musicians to invent a new way of working through sound together, and involved in a long-term project with the New Chamber Ballet in Brooklyn.