Rebecca Ruth Gould

Poet, Fiction Writer, Creative Nonfiction Writer, Translator

London, UK

United Kingdom

Email:

Website:

Twitter/X:

RSS feed:

Author's Bio

Rebecca Ruth Gould is a writer and scholar based in the United Kingdom. Her most recent books are Erasing Palestine: Free Speech and Palestinian Freedom (Verso, 2023) and the short story collection Strangers (Serving House Press, 2025). Her writing has been featured in The New Arab, Middle East Eye, Guernica, London Review of Books, The Nation, and Jacobin. She is currently working on an oral history of the Gaza genocide with the Lighthouse Collective. She writes and edits the newsletter The Textual Materialist on Substack and is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Poetics and Global Politics in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

Writers Retreats:

American Literary Translators Association Conference

Publications & Prizes

Creative Nonfiction

Journals:

Bacopa Literary Review

Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies

Gettysburg Review

Guernica Magazine

Kenyon Review Online

New Haven Review

Fiction

Anthologies:

How Well You Walk Through Madness (Weasel Press, 2017)

Lovers’ Lies (Arachne, 2013)

Book:

Strangers (Serving House Books, 2025)

Journals:

New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing

Postcolonial Text

The Scores

Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal

Poetry

Books:

Beautiful English (Dreich Press, 2021)

Cityscapes (Alien Buddha Press, 2019)

Journals:

Descant

Empty Mirror

GNU Journal

Otoliths

Redactions

The Feminist Wire

Translation

Books:

House Arrest (co-translated with Kayvan Tahmasebian) by Hasan Alizadeh, translated from the Persian (Arc Publications, 2022)

;

After Tomorrow the Days Disappear Ghazals and Other Poems by Hasan Sizji, translated from the Persian (Northwestern University Press, 2016)

Journals:

Hudson Review, a poem by Sergei Esenin, translated from the Russian

;

Malahat Review, a poem by Hasan Alizadeh, translated from the Persian

;

Modern Poetry in Translation, a poem by Hasan Alizadeh, translated from the Persian

;

New Delta Review, a poem by Hasan Alizadeh, translated from the Persian

;

Waxwing, a poem by Hasan Alizadeh, translated from the Persian

Prizes won:

British Academy Writing Workshop, “Southern Global Epistemologies” (2018); Monograph Award, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (shared with co-author, 2018), Arthur Miller Centre Essay Prize, British Association of American Studies (2018); Finalist, Lunch Ticket's Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation & Multilingual Texts (co-recipient with Kayvan Tahmasebian, 2017); Finalist, The Coil's Luminaire Award for Best Poetry (Alternating Current Press, 2017); Florence Howe Award for Feminist Scholarship, Modern Languages Association, Women’s Caucus (2015); Charles Schmitt Prize, International Society for Intellectual History (2015); Translator’s Honorarium, Literature in Translation Program, Georgian National Book Center (2015); Mentorship in Literary Translation, British Centre for Literary Translation, Arts Council England (2013); American Literary Translators Association Fellowship (2007)

Watch

Contemporary Iranian Poetry in Translation

Listen

3158 - Pro-Palestine Voices Silenced; HUGE UAW Strike Looms w/ Rebecca Ruth Gould, Jessie Kelly by Majority Report

Personal Favorites

Favorite authors:

Writers of importance to me include Virginia Woolf, Mahmoud Darwish, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Titsian Tabidze (a Georgian poet), Jorge Luis Borges, Danilo Kis, Magomed Mamakaev (a Chechen poet), George Eliot, Franz Kafka, and Edith Wharton. Thinkers who have influenced me include Giambattista Vico, Walter Benjamin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Emma Goldman.

What I'm reading now:

Homo Poeticus: Essays and Interviews by Danilo Kiš, Stolen Air by Osip Mandel'shtam (trans. Christian Wiman)

More Information

Gives readings:

Yes

Travels for readings:

Yes

Prefers to work with:

Any, Immigration, Incarcerated Individuals

Fluent in:

English, Georgian, Persian, Russian

Born in:

Raised in:

Washington, DC, New York, Sacramento, Tampa, OR

Oregon

Please note: All information in the Directory is provided by the listed writers or their representatives.

Last update: Feb 03, 2026