Bidisha was educated at the private school Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls. She studied Old and Middle English at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford and gained an MSc in Moral and Political Philosophy and Economic History at the London School of Economics.

In 1995 at the age of 16 Bidisha signed a £15,000 book deal with HarperCollins. Her first novel, Seahorses, was published two years later, during her first year at university. During this time she also had regular opinion columns in The Big Issue magazine, the Daily Telegraph and the Thursday edition of The Independent newspaper. Bidisha's second novel, the thriller Too Fast to Live, was published when she was 21. Her third book, Venetian Masters - a travel memoir - was published in February 2008. She was a contributing editor of the feminist magazine Sibyl and the style magazine 2nd Generation. She has written for The Guardian, the Financial Times, Mslexia, The Observer, New Statesman and arts magazine The List.. She was one of the judges for the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction and was announced as one of the judges of the 2010 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize..

In tandem with her writing, Bidisha has developed a career as a radio and TV arts critic and presenter. She was a regular guest on BBC Two's Newsnight Review. For BBC Radio 4 she has contributed regularly to Saturday Review and Front Row as well as presenting Archive on Four, Heart and Soul and Woman's Hour. She was one of the regular presenters of BBC Radio 3's arts programme, Night Waves. On the World Service she was a guest presenter of the books programme The Word and still regularly hosts The Strand.