Ben Lerner

Benjamin S. Lerner (born February 4, 1979)^[1] is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among many other honors.^{[2] [3]} Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.^[4]

Lerner was born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, which figures in each of his books of poetry. His mother is the clinical psychologist Harriet Lerner.^[5] He is a 1997 graduate of Topeka High School, where he participated in debate and forensics, winning the 1997 National Forensic League National Tournament in International Extemporaneous Speaking.^[6] At Brown University he studied with poet C. D. Wright and earned a B.A. in political theory and an MFA in poetry.^[7]

Lerner was awarded the Hayden Carruth prize for his cycle of 52 sonnets, The Lichtenberg Figures.^[8] In 2004 Library Journal named it one of the year's 12 best books of poetry.

In 2003 Lerner traveled on a Fulbright Scholarship to Madrid, Spain, where he wrote his second book of poetry, Angle of Yaw, which was published in 2006. It was named a finalist for the National Book Award. His third poetry collection, Mean Free Path, was published in 2010.

Lerner's first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, published in 2011,^[9] won the Believer Book Award ^[10] and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction (The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction ^{[broken anchor ]}) and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. Writing in The Guardian , Geoff Dyer called it "a work so luminously original in style and form as to seem like a premonition, a comet from the future."^[11]

Excerpts of Lerner's second novel, 10:04 , won the Terry Southern Prize from The Paris Review .^[12] Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books , Maggie Nelson called 10:04 a "near perfect piece of literature."^[13] The New York Times named 10:04 one of the best books of the 21st century. ^[14]

The New York Times Book Review called Lerner's 2019 novel The Topeka School "a high-water mark in recent American fiction."^[15] Giles Harvey, in The New York Times Magazine , called it "the best book yet by the most talented writer of his generation." The New York Times also named it one of the ten best books of the year.^[16] Lerner's essays, art criticism, and literary criticism have appeared in Harper's Magazine , the London Review of Books , The New York Review of Books , and The New Yorker , among other publications.^[17] The Topeka School, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.^[18]

In 2023, Lerner published his fourth full-length book of poetry, both verse and prose poems, The Lights. In The New York Times, Srikanth Reddy wrote: "It takes a poet to invent characters who argue that 'the voice must be sung into existence.' It takes a novelist to honor so many perspectives, histories and intimacies in one book..The poet/novelist of The Lights enlarges Baudelaire’s experiments in prose poetry into a multistory dream house for contemporary American readers." In The New Yorker, Kamran Javadizadeh called The Lights "world-bridging poetry", "uncannily beautiful", and "exceedingly lovely".^[19]

In 2008 Lerner began editing poetry for Critical Quarterly , a British scholarly publication.^[20] In 2016 he became the first poetry editor at Harper's .^[21] He has taught at California College of the Arts and the University of Pittsburgh, and in 2010 joined the faculty of the MFA program at Brooklyn College.^[22] He was an original signatory of the manifesto "Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions", which endorses a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions, including publishers and literary festivals.^[23]

• The Lichtenberg figures. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press. 2004.
• Angle of Yaw . Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press. 2006. ISBN 9781556592461.
• Mean Free Path. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press. 2010. ISBN 9781619320741.
• No Art. 2016. Collection of previous three volumes.
• The Lights. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2023.

• Leaving the Atocha Station , Coffee House Press, 2011. ISBN 9781566892926
• 10:04 , Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. ISBN 978-0865478107 ^[24]
• The Topeka School, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.

• The Hatred of Poetry. FSG Originals, 2016.

• Keeping / the window open: Interviews, Statements, Alarms, Excursions. On Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop. Wave Books, 2019.

• Blossom. Mack Books, 2015. With Thomas Demand.
• The Polish Rider. Mack Books, 2018. With Anna Ostoya.
• The Snows of Venice. Spector Books, 2018. With Alexander Kluge
• Gold Custody. Mack Books, 2021. With Barbara Bloom
• The Clichés. Song Cave Editions, 2022. With R. H. Quaytman

• 2003 – Hayden Carruth Award^[25]
• 2003–2004 – Fulbright Fellowship ^[26]
• 2006 – Finalist, National Book Award ^[27] for Angle of Yaw.
• 2006 – Finalist, Northern California Book Awards for Angle of Yaw^[28]
• 2007 – Kansas Notable Book Award for Angle of Yaw
• 2010–2011 – Howard Foundation Fellowship^[29]
• 2011 – Preis der Stadt Münster für internationale Poesie^[30]
• 2011 – Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction^[31]
• 2012 – Finalist, Young Lions Fiction Award of the New York Public Library ^[32]
• 2012 – Believer Book Award ^[10]
• 2012 – Finalist, William Saroyan International Prize for Writing ^[33]
• 2012 – Finalist, PEN/Bingham Award^[34]
• 2013 – Finalist, James Tait Black Memorial Prize^[35]
• 2013 – Guggenheim Fellowship^[17]
• 2014 – Terry Southern Fiction Prize from The Paris Review ^[12]
• 2014 – Finalist, Folio Prize ^[36]
• 2017 – named one of Granta's best young American novelists
• 2015–2020 Winner, MacArthur Foundation Fellowship
• 2019 – Finalist, Folio Prize
• 2019 – Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award
• 2019 Winner, Kansas Notable Book Award
• 2019 – Winner, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction
• 2020 – Finalist, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction ^[3]
• 2024 – Long listed for The Griffin Prize for poetry

• An essay about The Topeka School and Lerner's other novels at Harper's
• "Cafe Loup", a story by Lerner at The New Yorker
• The Ferry, a story by Lerner at The New Yorker
• An excerpt from The Topeka School at The New Yorker
• Lerner's page and the MacArthur Foundation
• Lerner's page for the Griffin Poetry Prize
• An editorial by Lerner against funding cuts in higher education
• Interview with Ariana Reines in Bomb Magazine
• Lerner's page at the Guggenheim Foundation
• Lerner's National Book Award page Archived 2011年07月16日 at the Wayback Machine
• Interview with Lerner in The New Yorker
• Interview with Lerner in The Believer
• Interview with Lerner in Bookforum
• Interview with Lerner in The Huffington Post
• Audio of Lerner poetry reading
• "My First Time" interview with Lerner by The Paris Review

• 1979 births
• Living people
• 21st-century American male writers
• 21st-century American novelists
• 21st-century American poets
• American male novelists
• American male poets
• Believer Book Award winners
• Brooklyn College faculty
• Brown University alumni
• Harper's Magazine people
• MacArthur Fellows
• The New York Review of Books people
• The New Yorker people
• Novelists from New York (state)
• Novelists from Pennsylvania
• University of Pittsburgh faculty
• Writers from Topeka, Kansas
• Topeka High School alumni

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