Diana Arterian

Diana Arterian is an American poet, writer, critic, editor, and translator.

Arterian was born and raised in Arizona.

She attended California Institute of the Arts, where she obtained her MFA and was mentored by Maggie Nelson.

She earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California.

She lives in Cambridge and Los Angeles.

Arterian has had fellowships and residencies at Banff Centre, Millay Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo.

She is a poetry editor for Noemi Press, and curates and writes the "Annotated Nightstand" column at Literary Hub.

Arterian's first book of poetry, Playing Monster :: Seiche, received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which states, "Arterian weaves a family narrative of devastating clarity from letters, found text, memories, and more in her striking debut...The post-traumatic stress of a family is a complex subject that Arterian skillfully describes in plain language, achieving deep emotionality."

Allie Rowbottom writes in her review, "At once ambitious and restrained, [Playing Monster :: Seiche] demonstrates not only Arterian’s lyrical range and knack for producing work with a certain epic energy, but also her ability to pair delicate content (in this case the trauma of domestic abuse), with a form expressive of its deeper energetic truth. The result is a portrait of anxiety and fear that is both detailed, sweeping and evocative."

The collection moves between two narratives to create a book-length poem describing Arterian's childhood experiences with abusive father in the "Playing Monster" portion, and her mother more recently having a stalker in the "Seiche" portion.

In a conversation in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Arterian mentions some uncertainty about publishing a book that is emotionally difficult to read.

She explains, "After some years of hand-wringing I decided it felt important to publish predominantly because the stability of the home is often a false facade — the home of the educated, white, middle-class family, in particular."

A "seiche" is a standing wave that moves across a body of water, which Arterian mentions embodies the feeling of dread in an abusive situation.

In an essay for the Poetry Foundation, she notes, "I recently came upon a piece of knowledge that links these two manuscripts in my mind more tightly than ever before. A seiche can produce a single ripple so large and strange to those who see it from afar it registers as unknown, as danger, as animal—as monster," as seiches at times convince viewers they see the Loch Ness Monster.

Arterian's criticism has appeared widely, including in New York Times Book Review, The Rumpus, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Boston Review, and she curates the "Annotated Nightstand" column at Literary Hub.

Her co-translations of the work of the late Afghan poet Nadia Anjuman completed with Marina Omar are published in a variety of journals, including Apogee Journal, Arkansas International Review, Asymptote Journal, North American Review, and Poet Lore.

The composer Reena Esmail set some of these co-translations to music, the performances of which have received positive reviews.