Alice Goodman was born in Minnesota in 1958 into a Reform Jewish family, and educated at Harvard and at Cambridge University. In 1985 she was approached by the director Peter Sellars to write the libretto for John Adams’ opera Nixon in China, a work which is now recognised as one of the major operas of the twentieth century. Another collaboration with Peter Sellars, John Adams, and choreographer Mark Morris produced The Death of Klinghoffer, which premiered in Brussels in 1991. This opera recounts the execution of the wheelchair-bound Jewish passenger Leon Klinghoffer by Palestinian terrorists on board the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro in 1984. Klinghoffer drew, and continues to draw, acclaim—and vocal condemnation from some quarters—for its sympathetic and humane portrayal of both the victims and perpetrators of political violence. In 1991 Goodman also translated The Magic Flute for Sellars’ production at Glyndebourne Festival Opera.

More recently, Goodman has collaborated with the composer Tarik O’Regan on a cantata, A Letter of Rights, in 2015 for Salisbury Cathedral, with Peter Sellars and Benjamin Bagby on Fauvel at the Théâtre du Châtelet (March 2022), and with Nico Muhly on The Street, Stations of the Cross for harp soloist, reader, and choir (April 2022).

In 1990 Goodman was received into the Church. She studied theology at Boston University School of Theology and Ripon College Cuddesdon, and was ordained in the Church of England in 2001. Since 2011 she has been Rector of three parishes in Cambridgeshire.

Alice Goodman’s libretti were published as a NYRB Classic in May 2017, under the title History is Our Mother.