Sails for a Long Voyage-a Reading by Chinese and American Poets
Monday, July 20th, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
International House of Rhode Island (map)
Hosts: Xue Di, Wang Jiaxin; Guest Readers: Lan Lan, Ha Jin, Xue Di, Wang Jiaxin, Jami Proctor Xu, Eleanor Goodman, Qingyan, Fangkai Lyu
International House is delighted to welcome a group of world-class Chinese and American poets and translators for a very special reading! National Book Award Winner Ha Jin is joined by fellow internationally-acclaimed poets and translators Lan Lan, Xue Di, Wang Jiaxin, Qingyan, Jami Proctor Xu, Eleanor Goodman, and Fangkai Lyu for an evening of poetry and a discussion of the choices and challenges involved in poetic translation. We hope that you will join us for this very unique evening!
Meet the Poets
Lan Lan：Chinese poet and essayist Lan Lan, born 1967 in Yantai, Shandong province, began publishing at 14. Her many poetry volumes, essays，and collections for children have established her as one of contemporary China's most prominent authors. Lan Lan's foreign language collections include the bilingual Chinese / English Canyon in the Body, as well as those in Russian, and Spanish. Her awards include the Poetry and People International Poetry Prize, the Yuan Kejia Poetry Award, the Chinese Media Literature Prize, and the Su Shi Poetry Award. She has been named an honorary citizen of Chios and Oinousses, Homer's Greek birthplace.
Ha Jin，a Chinese-American writer, poet, National Book Award winner, and professor at Boston University.
Xue Di was born in Beijing. He is the author of four volumes of collected works and one book of criticism on contemporary Chinese poetry in Chinese. In English translation, he has published six full length books and four chapbooks. His work has appeared in numerous American journals and anthologies and has been translated into several languages. Xue Di is a two-time recipient of the Hellman/Hammett Award, a recipient of the Artemis A. Joukowsky fellowship through Brown University, and a recipient of the Lannan Foundation Fellowship.
Wang Jiaxin is a Chinese poet, essayist, and translator and has published more than forty books. His collection of poems in English is Darkening Mirror (Tebot Bach, 2017), translated by Diana Shi and George O’Connell, with a foreword by former US Poet Laureate Robert Hass, was shortlist for 2018 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. His work has appeared in more than a dozen American journals. He was a professor at Renmin University of China for years—he now spends most of his time in New York.His second collection of poems in English, At the Same Time (Arrowsmith, 2025), translated by John Balcom, was longlisted for the 2026 PEN America Award for Poetry in Translation.
Jami Proctor Xu is a mother, bilingual poet, essayist, translator, editor, and international poetry event curator who splits her time between New York, Arizona, and China. Her poems, essays, and translations have been published in anthologies and journals around the world. Jami’s awards include, among others, a Zhujiang Poetry Award, a Bo’Ao International Poetry Translation Award, and a Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation.
Eleanor Goodman is an award-winning translator and author. Her first poetry collection is Nine Dragon Island (2016), and her translations include Something Crosses My Mind: Selected Poems of Wang Xiaoni (2014), Iron Moon: An Anthology of Chinese Workers Poetry (2017), The Roots of Wisdom: Poems by Zang Di (2017), and Days When I Hide My Corpse in a Cardboard Box: Poems of Natalia Chan (2018). She has been an artist in residence at the American Academy in Rome, held a Fulbright grant to Beijing, and participated in the Princeton Poetry Festival. She is a research associate at the Harvard University Fairbank Center.
Qingyan, a Chinese writer and online author, lives in Rhode Island and has participated in organizing many cultural exchange activities between China and the United States.
Fangkai Lyu is a Chinese poet based in Rhode Island, USA. His poetry explores everyday life. He actively participates in Chinese–American poetry exchanges.
