Eleanor Goodman

Eleanor Goodman, 顾爱玲 (b. 1979) is an American poet, writer, and translator of Chinese. Her 2014 translation of the poems of Wang Xiaoni, Something Crosses My Mind was an international finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and a winner of the Lucien Stryk American Literary Translators Association Prize for excellence in translation.

Goodman is a 2001 graduate of Amherst College, with degrees in English and music, and a masters from Boston University.

She gained notice for her translation of Wang Xiaoni with its shortlist for the Griffin prize, noted as the largest monetary award for poetry; for translations the award's "focus is on the achievement of the translator." Reviews of the work cited its "brilliant translation" and said that Goodman was "a wonderful poet." Reviews appeared in the journal Cha and mainstream Chinese newspapers, South China Morning Post (also calling it a "brilliant translation") and Caixin Online. Feature articles on her work have appeared in Chinese in China News, The Paper, Paper Republic and LifeWeek. The work was previously awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant. She has been interviewed in the L.A. Review of Books and Poetry International. Her book of original poetry, Nine Dragon Island (Zephyr, 2016, forthcoming) was a finalist for the 2014 Drunken Boat poetry award. Short stories by her have appeared in Fiction and other journals.

In 2013, Goodman was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for research in China. She has also had residencies and visiting artist appointments at the Vermont Studio Center and the American Academy in Rome. She is a research associate at Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. Goodman writes frequently for the Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and ChinaFile.