Diana Whitney writes across the genres in Vermont with a focus on feminism, motherhood, and sexuality. Her first book, Wanting It, became an indie bestseller and won the Rubery Book Award in poetry. She was the longtime poetry critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, where she featured women poets and LGBTQ+ voices in her column. Her essays, op-eds, and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Kenyon Review, Glamour, and many more. Her anthology, You Don’t Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves, was released by Workman Publishing to critical acclaim, won the 2022 Claudia Lewis Award for the best poetry book of the year, and became a YA bestseller.

Diana was awarded a 2021-2022 Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council for her new collection about girls, rape culture, and excavating female adolescence. She has also received 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 Vermont Studio Center.

She holds a B.A. from Dartmouth and a M.A. from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and attended the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her irreverent parenting column, Spilt Milk, was syndicated for years, ran as a public radio commentary series, and became a blog at The Huffington Post.

Diana also works as a feminist activist in her community and beyond. Her advocacy for survivors of sexual violence has been featured in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Christian Science Monitor, among other press outlets.

She is grateful to be represented by agent Lisa DiMona at Writers House.

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