Nationality United States Role Poet Alma mater Brown University Spouse Ariana Mangual | Genre Poetry, novels, essays Parents Harriet Lerner Name Ben Lerner | |
Born February 4, 1979 (age 45)
Topeka, Kansas ( 1979-02-04 ) Notable awards Guggenheim Fellowship;
Believer Book Award;
MacArthur Fellowship Education Brown University, Topeka High School Awards MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, US & Canada Nominations National Book Award for Poetry, Goodreads Choice Awards Best Poetry Books 10:04, Leaving the Atocha Station, Angle of Yaw, The Lichtenberg figures, Body by God | ||
Poem present ben lerner reading
Benjamin S. Lerner (born February 4, 1979) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, a finalist for the National Book Award, a Howard Foundation Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and he is currently a MacArthur Fellow. In 2011 he won the "Preis der Stadt Münster für internationale Poesie", making him the first American to receive this honor. Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.
Contents
- Poem present ben lerner reading
- Ben lerner on 10 04 the politics of imagination and the craft of writing
- Life and work
- Poetry
- Fiction
- Nonfiction
- Awards
- References
Ben lerner on 10 04 the politics of imagination and the craft of writing
Life and work
Lerner was born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, which figures in each of his books of poetry. 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. At Brown University he earned a B.A. in political theory and an MFA in poetry.
Lerner was awarded the Hayden Carruth prize for his cycle of 52 sonnets, The Lichtenberg Figures. In 2004, Library Journal named it one of the year's twelve best books of poetry.
He traveled on a Fulbright Scholarship to Madrid, Spain in 2003 where he wrote his second book, Angle of Yaw, which was published in 2006. It was named a finalist for the National Book Award. Lerner's third poetry collection, Mean Free Path, was published in 2010.
Lerner's first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, published in 2011, won the Believer Book Award. and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for first fiction and the New York Public Library's Young Lions prize. Writing in The Guardian, Geoff Dyer described Leaving the Atocha Station as "a work so luminously original in style and form as to seem like a premonition, a comet from the future." Excerpts of Lerner's second novel, 10:04, won the Terry Southern Prize from The Paris Review. Writing in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Maggie Nelson called 10:04 a "near perfect piece of literature." His essays, art criticism, and literary criticism have appeared in Art in America, boundary 2, Frieze, Harper's, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New Yorker among many other publications.
In 2008, Lerner began editing poetry for Critical Quarterly, a British scholarly publication. In 2016, he became the first poetry editor at Harper's. He has taught at California College of the Arts, the University of Pittsburgh, and in 2010 joined the faculty of the MFA program at Brooklyn College.
Lerner received a 2015 MacArthur Fellowship.
Lerner's mother is the psychologist Harriet Lerner.
Lerner is a judge for the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize.
Poetry
Fiction
Nonfiction
The Hatred of Poetry. FSG Originals, 2016.