Ruth Fainlight (born May 2, 1931, New York City), is a poet, short story writer, translator and librettist.
Fainlight was born in New York, but has mainly lived in England since she was fifteen, having also spent some years living in France and Spain. In addition to her own works, Fainlight has also provided criticism for BBC Radio, Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and numerous other publications.
She was married to the British writer Alan Sillitoe (1928-2010) and has a son, David, who is a photographer for The Guardian and an adopted daughter, Susan. She lives in London.
She has twice been Poet in Residence at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.
'Autorul La Rampa' 2007, tr. Lidia Vianu, Univers Enciclopedic, Bucharest, Romania
`La Nueva Ciencia de los Materiales Fuertes`(bi-lingual, English/Spanish) 2009,
tr. M. Rosenberg & D. Samoilovich, Cosmopoetica, Cordoba, Spain
Poems in translation
The poem "Sugar-Paper Blue" was translated into Russian by Marina Boroditskaya and is published in the April 2003 issue of the Moscow monthly Inostrannaya Literatura (Foreign Literature).
The poem sequence "Sheba and Solomon" has been translated into Russian by Marina Boroditskaya and published in Moscow in the literary magazine Novaya Younost in 2003.
Libretti
"The Dancer Hotoke" 1991, composer Erika Fox (nominated for the 1992 Laurence Olivier Awards)
The European Story 1993, chamber opera, composer Geoffrey Alvarez (Based on poem of the same name). Both works above were commissioned by the Royal Opera House for their 'Garden Venture' program in 1991 and 1993)