Ditmas Lit

Diane Mehta was born in Frankfurt and grew up in Bombay and New Jersey. She is the author of the essay collection Happier Far (UGA Press 2025) and two poetry books: Tiny Extravaganzas (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) and Forest with Castanets (Four Way Books, 2019). She has written for The New Yorker, VQR, Kenyon Review, and A Public Space. Her writing has been supported by the Café Royal Cultural Foundation and fellowships at Civitella Ranieri, Yaddo, and VCCA. She was an editor at A Public Space, PEN America, and Guernica. She is poet in residence at the New Chamber Ballet in New York City. She was a judge for the 2024 Arrowsmith-Derek Walcott Poetry Prize and for the 2025 Silvers-Dudley prizes (NYRB Silvers Foundation) for literary criticism, arts writing, and journalism.

JoAnna Novak is the author of seven books, most recently, Domestirexia: Poems. Her short story collection Meaningful Work won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest and was published by FC2. She is…