Wikipedia

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's work 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.[2][3] Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.[4]

Ben Lerner
Lerner in 2015
Lerner in 2015
Born (1979-02-04) February 4, 1979 (age 47)
Topeka, Kansas, U.S.
OccupationWriter and critic
EducationBrown University (BA, MFA)
GenrePoetry, novels, essays
EmployerBrooklyn College
Notable awardsFulbright Scholar
Guggenheim Fellowship
Believer Book Award
MacArthur Fellowship

Early life and education

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Lerner was born and raised in Topeka, Kansas. His parents, Stephen Lerner and Harriet Lerner, are both clinical psychologists.[5] He is Jewish.[6][7]

Lerner 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.[8] At Brown University, he studied with poet C. D. Wright and earned a B.A. in political theory and an MFA in poetry.[9]

Career and reception

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Lerner was awarded the Hayden Carruth prize for his cycle of 52 sonnets, The Lichtenberg Figures.[10] 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.

In 2008, Lerner began editing poetry for Critical Quarterly, a British scholarly publication.[11] In 2016 he became the first poetry editor at Harper's Magazine.[12] 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.[13] 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.[14]

Lerner's first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, published in 2011,[15] won the Believer Book Award[16] 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."[17]

Excerpts of Lerner's second novel, 10:04, won the Terry Southern Prize from The Paris Review.[18] Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Maggie Nelson called 10:04 a "near perfect piece of literature".[19] The New York Times named 10:04 one of the best books of the 21st century.[20]

The New York Times Book Review called Lerner's 2019 novel The Topeka School "a high-water mark in recent American fiction".[21] 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.[22] 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.[23] The Topeka School, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[24]

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".[25]

Personal life

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Lerner is married to Ariana Manual Figueroa, a professor at CUNY Graduate Center.[26][27] They have two daughters.[26]

Awards

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Bibliography

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Books of poetry

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Novels

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Non-fiction

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Edited volumes

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

Collaborations with artists

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Short fiction online

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Poems online

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Non-fiction online

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References

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  1. ↑ "[I'm going to kill the president...] (Ben Lerner) · Lyrikline.org". September 26, 2016. Archived from the original on September 26, 2016.
  2. ↑ "Writers Speak | Ben Lerner in conversation with Duncan White". mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu. Archived from the original on July 18, 2023. Retrieved July 4, 2023.
  3. 1 2 "2020 Pulitzer Prizes". www.pulitzer.org. Archived from the original on December 3, 2023. Retrieved November 30, 2023.
  4. ↑ "CUNY Trustees Approve New Labor Contracts – CUNY Newswire". Archived from the original on September 22, 2016. Retrieved July 4, 2016.
  5. ↑ Harvey, Giles (October 8, 2019). "To Decode White Male Rage, First He Had to Write in His Mother's Voice". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 31, 2026.
  6. ↑ Valente, Joanna C. (September 30, 2015). "Jewish Writer Ben Lerner Wins "Genius Grant"—Can Now Afford Child Care". Kveller. Archived from the original on March 27, 2026. Retrieved March 27, 2026.
  7. ↑ Miller, David Lawrence (April 22, 2024). "'The Only Jew in Class': Greenfield Lynch Lecture: Ben Lerner in Conversation with Brett Kaplan". DAYS AND MEMORY. Retrieved March 27, 2026.
  8. ↑ Blankenship, Bill (March 9, 2005). "Young poet to read works at Washburn". The Topeka Capital-Journal. Archived from the original on May 11, 2014. Retrieved May 7, 2014.
  9. ↑ Lerner, Ben (January 14, 2016). "Postscript: C.D. Wright, 1949-2016". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on September 15, 2018. Retrieved January 20, 2019.
  10. ↑ "Ben Lerner's First Time". The Paris Review. February 16, 2016. Archived from the original on August 7, 2016. Retrieved June 27, 2016.
  11. ↑ Gavin, Alice (April 16, 2008). "The 'angle of immunity': face and façade in Beckett's Film". Critical Quarterly. 50 (3): 77–89. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8705.2008.00833.x.
  12. ↑ McMorris, Mark (March 2016). "The Drums of Marrakesh". Harper's Magazine. Archived from the original on May 2, 2016. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  13. ↑ "Brooklyn College English Department – MFA Faculty". Depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu. Archived from the original on September 3, 2011. Retrieved June 19, 2011.
  14. ↑ Sheehan, Dan (November 7, 2024). "Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions". Literary Hub. Retrieved November 10, 2024.
  15. ↑ "Ben Lerner". Narrative Magazine. December 15, 2008. Archived from the original on July 14, 2011. Retrieved June 19, 2011.
  16. 1 2 "Ben Lerner Wins the Believer Book Award". Archived from the original on January 3, 2015. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  17. ↑ Dyer, Geoff (July 5, 2012). "Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner – review". The Guardian. Archived from the original on November 21, 2016. Retrieved December 11, 2016.
  18. 1 2 The Paris Review (March 12, 2014). "Emma Cline Wins Plimpton Prize; Ben Lerner Wins Terry Southern Prize". The Paris Review. Archived from the original on April 8, 2019. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  19. ↑ Nelson, Maggie (August 24, 2014). "Slipping the Surly Bonds of Earth: On Ben Lerner's Latest". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2019-10-09.
  20. ↑ Pietras, Richard (July 16, 2024). "English Professor Benjamin Lerner Makes List of "100 Best Books of the 21st Century" - Brooklyn College". Brooklyn College.
  21. ↑ Hallberg, Garth Risk (October 3, 2019). "Ben Lerner's 'The Topeka School' Revisits the Debates of the '90s". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on March 15, 2022. Retrieved October 5, 2019.
  22. ↑ "The 10 Best Books of 2019". The New York Times. November 22, 2019. Archived from the original on November 24, 2019. Retrieved May 17, 2024.
  23. 1 2 "Ben Lerner - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation". Archived from the original on April 15, 2013. Retrieved April 12, 2013.
  24. ↑ Maher, John (May 4, 2020). "Moser, Whitehead, McDaniel, Grandin, Boyer, Brown Win 2020 Pulitzers". Publishers Weekly. Archived from the original on November 30, 2021. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  25. ↑ Javadizadeh, Kamran (September 11, 2023). "Close Encounters". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on November 10, 2024. Retrieved July 3, 2024.
  26. 1 2 Haas, Lidija (November 4, 2019). "'It made me really crazy': Ben Lerner on confronting male rage and family trauma". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved May 31, 2026.
  27. ↑ "Mangual Figueroa, Ariana". www.gc.cuny.edu. Archived from the original on May 31, 2026. Retrieved May 31, 2026.
  28. ↑ "Ben Lerner", University of Pittsburgh. Archived March 15, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  29. ↑ Donato, Claire (January 24, 2008). "Acclaimed young poet Ben Lerner relocates to Pittsburgh". Pittsburgh City Paper. Archived from the original on December 11, 2025. Retrieved May 24, 2009.
  30. ↑ "National Book Award 2006". Nationalbook.org. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 19 June 2011.
  31. ↑ "Poetry Flash:NCBRAwards". Poetry Flash. Archived from the original on May 13, 2008.
  32. ↑ "New Fellows". Brown.edu. Archived from the original on June 7, 2011. Retrieved June 19, 2011.
  33. ↑ "Stadt Münster: Kulturamt – Lyrikertreffen". Muenster.de. Archived from the original on June 17, 2011. Retrieved June 19, 2011.
  34. ↑ "Book Prizes – Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Los Angeles Times". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on June 10, 2017. Retrieved March 13, 2012.
  35. ↑ "The New York Public Library's 2012 Young Lions Fiction Award Finalists Announced". Flavorwire. March 14, 2012. Archived from the original on March 17, 2012. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  36. ↑ "2012 Saroyan Prize Shortlist". Archived from the original on May 29, 2012. Retrieved May 19, 2012.
  37. ↑ Hertzel, Laurie (August 28, 2012). "PEN literary awards announced". Star Tribune. Archived from the original on August 30, 2012. Retrieved October 6, 2012.
  38. ↑ "Last year's shortlist | James Tait Black Prizes". Archived from the original on April 29, 2013. Retrieved July 22, 2013.
  39. ↑ Kellogg, Carolyn (February 9, 2015). "Folio Prize shortlist includes Ben Lerner, Colm Toibin, Ali Smith". The Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 27, 2016. Retrieved November 26, 2014.
  40. ↑ "FSG's Favorite Books of 2013". Work in Progress. December 19, 2013. Archived from the original on May 31, 2014. Retrieved March 22, 2016.
  41. ↑ "Transcription". Archived from the original on August 2, 2025. Retrieved August 6, 2025.
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