Bio
Diana Whitney is a queer writer and educator embracing a fierce belief in the power of poetry as a means of connection to self and others. She is the editor of the bestselling anthology You Don’t Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves, winner of the Claudia Lewis Award, and the author of three full-length poetry books: Wanting It, Dark Beds, and Girl Trouble (coming April 2026). Her essays, poems, and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Kenyon Review, Glamour, Bracken, and many more.
A quintuple Gemini, Diana writes across genres and leads workshops for writers of all ages and experience levels. Her irreverent parenting column, Spilt Milk, was syndicated for years, ran as a public radio commentary series, and became a blog at HuffPost. She was the longtime poetry critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, where she featured women poets and LGBTQ+ voices in her column.
Diana was awarded a Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council for her work on Girl Trouble. She is also the recipient of grants and awards from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Women’s National Book Association, the Vermont Arts Endowment Fund, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the International Rubery Book Award, among others..
She holds a B.A. from Dartmouth, an M.A. from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and an M.F.A. from New England College.
An advocate for survivors of sexual violence in her Vermont hometown and beyond, Diana works as a developmental editor and a community organizer for a rural LGBTQ+ nonprofit. She is represented by agent Lisa DiMona at Writers House.
Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan