Diane Wald was born in Paterson, NJ, and has lived in Massachusetts since 1972. She holds an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has published over 250 poems in literary magazines since 1966. She was the recipient of a two-year fellowship in poetry from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and has been awarded the Grolier Poetry Prize, The Denny Award, and The Open Voice Award. She also received a state grant from the Artists Foundation (Massachusetts Council on the Arts).

She has published four chapbooks (Target of Roses from Grande Ronde Press, My Hat That Was Dreaming from White Fields Press, Double Mirror from Runaway Spoon Press, and faustinetta, gegenschein, trapunto from Cervena Barva Press) and won the Green Lake Chapbook Award from Owl Creek Press. An electronic chapbook (Improvisations on Titles of Works by Jean Dubuffet) appears on the Mudlark website. She received the first annual Anne Halley Poetry Prize from the Massachusetts Review. Her book Lucid Suitcase was published by Red Hen Press in 1999 and her book, The Yellow Hotel, was published by Verse Press in the fall of 2002. Her book WONDERBENDER was published in 2011 by 1913 Press. She has taught at Boston University, The Art Institute of Boston, and Northeastern University. Gillyflower, her first novel, wias released in April 2019 and won first place for Novellas from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.