about

Eleanor Goodman is a writer and a translator from Chinese. Her work appears in publications such as PN Review, The Quarterly Conversation, 天南, Fiction, Pathlight, Cha, The Guardian, Pleiades, Acumen, Perihelion, The Los Angeles Review, and on The Best American Poetry website. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Amherst College and has a Masters in Creative Writing from Boston University.

Her honors include a 2012 DJS translation award, two Ann Kao Foundation Translation Fellowships, the International Merit Award in Poetry from the Atlanta Review, induction into Phi Beta Kappa, and residencies at the American Academy in Rome and the Vermont Studio Center. She has lectured at Yale, Northeastern, Beijing University, and Zhongyang Minzu University.

She is currently a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. Her book of translations, The Selected Poems of Wang Xiaoni, will be published by Zephyr Press this year. In 2013-14, she will spend a year in Beijing on a Fulbright Fellowship.

Selected translations are available online here.

Email Eleanor (顾爱玲) at eleanor@eleanorgoodman.com.

poetry

Eleanor's poetry has been published widely in the U.S. and abroad in journals and magazines including Cha, Charles River Journal, The Best American Poetry website, New Delta Review, Eden Waters Press, The Pedestal Magazine, Ibbetson Street Press, and Terrain.org.

Her collaboration with the composer Steve Potter, "Piety (IV)" won the composition prize from the Wellcome Foundation. Her teachers include Robert Pinsky, Derek Walcott, Rosanna Warren, and Geoffrey Hill. Her first poetry collection Habitation is under consideration at several presses.

Selected Poems Online

three poems (2012) in Terrain.org
Sanctum (2011) in Cha (nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
Ohio (2007) in The Pedestal Magazine

prose

Eleanor Goodman writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her short story, "Getting to No" appeared in Fiction (2009).

As a critic, she has published reviews in Cerise Press and written a series of essays for The Best American Poetry website on topics ranging from the role of the translator to a meditation on the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise. She also writes book reviews for The Quarterly Conversation.

She was a Visiting Writer at the American Academy in Rome in January 2012, and held a month-long residency at the Vermont Studio Center in December of 2012. She has taught writing at Grub Street and Boston University, and has served as manuscript consultant for books published by major university presses.

Her work is represented by Inkwell Management, NYC.

translation

Fluent in Mandarin, Eleanor has been commissioned to translate both poetry and prose. She has published translations of contemporary Chinese poetry by a wide range of poets including Li Li, Yu Xiang, Chen Dongdong, Yan Jun, and many others. Her collection of translations of fifteen contemporary poets, The Lamp Inside the Stones, in collaboration with the poet and scholar Wang Ao, was a finalist for the 2012 Cliff Becker Book Prize and is currently seeking a press. She has also translated fiction and interviews, was translation consultant for the book Our Common Suffering: Poetry in Memory of the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, and lectures frequently in China. Her translations have merited two Ann Kao Foundation Fellowships, and a 2012 DSJ Translation Award.

Her translations have appeared in Pathlight, Inventory, The Best American Poetry website, 天南 Cha, Poetry International Web, Los Angeles Review, Acumen, Pleiades, Cerise Press, The Guardian, PN Review, Seneca Review, and Asymptote. Her book of translations of Wang Xiaoni will be published later this year.

Selected Translations:

A Dictionary of Xinjiang by Shen Wei, published in 天南
Bubbles by Li Li, published in Asymptote
Spinach by Zang Di, published in PN Review
A Painter's Life by Yu Xiang, published on The Best American Poetry blog.