Ada Cal­houn is author of the novel Crush, named one of the 100 Must-Read Books by Time; and one of the 29 Best Literary Novels of the year by Elle. In a starred review, Booklist said, "Suspense is the primary draw for this angsty, metaphysical, literature-besotted love story... Crush (such a charged word) interrogates all that we think we know about love and soul mates, commitment and conviction, while tracking the long struggle to fully become oneself and do right." 

Crush was hailed on the Today Show as the month's Best Romance and praised by the Washington Post for its "whirlwind of desire and possibility." The Boston Globe said, "Crush reveals the sly ways we delude ourselves into accepting what’s good enough and the liberating ways we can recover our joie de vivre as well as our autonomy.”

Her last book, Also a Poet: Frank O'Hara, My Father, and Me, was named one of the Best Books of 2022 by the New York Times, Washington Post, Oprah Daily, and NPR; featured on PBS News Hour and the Today show; and longlisted for an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Nonfiction. Times critic Alexandra Jacobs called it her favorite memoir of the year; Hudson Booksellers called it the nonfiction book of the year.

Her instant New York Times bestseller Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis, was an expansion of her viral story for Oprah.com about the unique circumstances faced by Generation X women. One of the Amazon Editors' Best Nonfiction Books of 2020, a Goodreads Choice Award Finalist, and an Indie Next Pick, Why We Can’t Sleep was one of the biggest books of the season according to the New York Times, Parade, and O magazine. It was translated into multiple foreign languages.

Calhoun's prior two books are the New York City history St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America's Hippest Street, a New York Times Editors’ Pick named one of the best books of 2015 by Kirkus Reviews, the Boston Globe, Orlando Weekly, the New York Post, and the Village Voice; and the memoir Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give, which came out of a viral Modern Love column and was featured twice on the Today show.

She is considered one of the top ghostwriters in the world, having anonymously collaborated on more than thirty major nonfiction books, including several #1 New York Times bestsellers.

Past jobs include crime reporter for the New York Post, frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review, and second-string theater critic for New York magazine. She has written for Time, National Geographic Traveler, the Times Literary Supplement, the New Republic, Billboard, Cosmopolitan, the Washington Post, and Redbook; and contributed three essays to the New Yorker's “Page-Turner” column; and three "Modern Love," and four "Lives" columns to the New York Times. Her contribution to Beastie Boys Book was called "one of the more effective guest-star turns."

Her national news reporting has won several awards, including a USC-Annenberg National Health Journalism Fellowship, a Kiplinger fellowship, a CCF Media Award (for her New York Times Magazine work on a legal challenge in Alabama), a Croly Award, and an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship. She received a MacDowell colony stay in 2013 for St. Marks Is Dead, and has been granted several residencies in the New York Public Library's scholars' rooms, including in 2025. In 2023 she was a fellow at the Hawthornden Castle in Scotland.

She is cofounder of the women-in-nonfiction support group / reading series Sob Sisters, and has taught writing throughout the country, including public affairs reporting at Hofstra University, creative non-fiction at the Rutgers Summer Conference, and memoir and proposal writing at the Miami Book Fair's Writers Institute (for which she served as the first Emerging Writer Fellowship nonfiction mentor). In 2026, she will be leading the summer memoir workshop at the Omega Institute in Upstate New York for the fourth time. She's served on panels at the country's major book festivals, and speaks frequently at bookstores and libraries nationwide.

She has been profiled in several publications. In a cover story, the Village Voice described her as "cheerful and mannerly.” The New York Times: "effervescent and conversational." Walk It Off: "Fascinating." Publishers Weekly: "With tousled bleach-blonde hair, she gives off a kind of Debbie Harry, circa the 1970s, energy."

Her next book, Welcome to the Club, about finding connection and reinvention in the unfashionable American practice, is due out from Viking in 2027. For that project, she has joined dozens of clubs, from the Daughters of the American Revolution to the Society for Creative Anachronism. She is also a licensed New York City tour guide, in training to be an end-of-life doula, godmother to many children, and president of her East Village co-op. She majored in Sanskrit.