She is the author of St. Marks Is Dead, a history of St. Mark's Place in East Village, Manhattan, New York; Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, a book of essays about marriage; Why We Can't Sleep, a book about Generation X women and their struggles; Also a Poet, a memoir about her father and the poet Frank O’Hara, and the forthcoming Crush: A Novel.

She was mentioned in Christopher Isherwood’s diaries as “One of the most agreeable children imaginable, neither sulky nor sly nor pushy nor ugly, with a charming trustful smile for all of us …”[6] She has written in The New York Times Magazine about a childhood fascination with the suburbs.

It was inspired by the success of her "Modern Love" column in The New York Times, "The Wedding Toast I’ll Never Give,"[24] which the paper named one of its most-read stories of 2015.

[26] In the book, Calhoun presents seven personal essays, framed as "toasts", that discuss topics such as infidelity, existential anxiety, fighting in rental cars, and the "soulmates" ideal.

Library Journal said, "Alternating between hilarious personal anecdote and sobering professional insight, this memoir conveys perhaps the simplest lesson ever given about learning to make a marriage last: just don’t get divorced.

"[27] The book received blurbs from Molly Ringwald, Susannah Cahalan, Karen Abbott, Phillip Lopate, Carlene Bauer, Davy Rothbart, Leah Carroll, Kathryn Hahn, Gretchen Rubin, Emma Straub, and Rebecca Traister.

"[38] The Wall Street Journal's Emily Bobrow found many of the book's "grumbles reassuringly familiar" but called it "a little whiny" and said Calhoun is "not above cherry-picking statistics.

A Publishers Weekly profile said, “Nothing goes as planned in Ada Calhoun’s Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me (Grove, June), but that’s precisely why it captivates.

[45] The New York Times's Alexandra Jacobs called it "a grand slam of a new memoir" and wrote that it "is packaged as a love triangle: father, daughter and O’Hara.

[47] According to the publisher: “Using the author’s personal experiences as a jumping-off point, Crush is about the danger and liberation of chasing desire, the havoc it can wreak, and most of all the clear sense of self one finds when the storm passes.

Destined to become a classic novel of marriage, and tackling the big questions being asked about partnership in postpandemic relationships, Crush is a sharp, funny, seductive, and revelatory novel about holding on to everything it’s possible to love—friends, children, parents, passion, lovers, husbands, all of the world’s good books, and most of all one’s own deep sense of purpose.” Crush received blurbs from Molly Ringwald, Isaac Fitzgerald, Claire Dederer, Emma Straub, Shauna Niequist, Bethany Ball, and has been met with early positive reviews.

In a starred review, Booklist described Crush as an “angsty, metaphysical, literature-besotted love story” with a “brainy, funny, rigorously analytical, and determined narrator… 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.”[48] Kirkus Reviews said, “the novel bogs down a bit once the crush has peaked,” but that it is “chock-full of great lines… Anything Ada Calhoun wants to write is well worth reading.”[49] Calhoun won the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Award gold medal in U.S. History,[50] 2015 USC-Annenberg National Health Journalism Fellowship,[51] 2014 Kiplinger fellowship,[52] 2013 Council on Contemporary Families Media Award,[53] and 2014 Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship;[54] one of her Patterson stories won the 2015 Croly Award.

[58] In a Vogue essay in 2022 she mentioned that she had separated, “When grief invades your life, the world becomes surreal—and, as in dreams, unexpected gifts begin to drop from the sky.

After my father’s death and my separation from my partner of more than 20 years, I received an invitation to a residency I’d applied for and then forgotten about: a month in a 15th-century castle outside of Edinburgh.

[62] She majored in Plan II Honors at the University of Texas at Austin, where for her senior thesis she translated part of the Sanskrit Atharvaveda.