Ben Lerner

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.[4] At Brown University he studied with poet C. D. Wright and earned a B.A. in political theory and an MFA in poetry.[5]

Lerner was awarded the Hayden Carruth prize for his cycle of 52 sonnets, The Lichtenberg Figures.[6] 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.[7]

Lerner's first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, published in 2011,[8] won the Believer Book Award[9] 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 called it "a work so luminously original in style and form as to seem like a premonition, a comet from the future."[10] Excerpts of Lerner's second novel, 10:04, won the Terry Southern Prize from The Paris Review.[11] Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Maggie Nelson called 10:04 a "near perfect piece of literature."[12] Lerner's 2019 novel, The Topeka School, was acclaimed in The New York Times Book Review as "a high-water mark in recent American fiction."[13] Giles Harvey, in The New York Times Magazine, called The Topeka School "the best book yet by the most talented writer of his generation." Lerner’s 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 other publications.[14] The Topeka School was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[15]

In 2008 Lerner began editing poetry for Critical Quarterly, a British scholarly publication.[16] In 2016 he became the first poetry editor at Harper's.[17] 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.[18]

In 2016 Lerner became a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.[19] He received a 2015 MacArthur Fellowship.[20]

Lerner's mother is the psychologist Harriet Lerner.[21]

• 2003 – Hayden Carruth Award[24]
• 2003–2004 – Fulbright Fellowship[25]
• 2006 – Finalist, National Book Award[26] for Angle of Yaw.
• 2006 – Finalist, Northern California Book Awards for Angle of Yaw[27]
• 2007 – Kansas Notable Book for Angle of Yaw
• 2010–2011 – Howard Foundation Fellowship[28]
• 2011 – Preis der Stadt Münster für internationale Poesie[2]
• 2011 – Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Award for first fiction[29]
• 2012 – Finalist, Young Lions Prize of the New York Public Library[30]
• 2012 – The Believer Book Award[9]
• 2012 – Finalist, William Saroyan International Prize for Writing[31]
• 2012 – Finalist, PEN/Bingham Award[32]
• 2013 – Finalist, James Tait Black Memorial Prize[33]
• 2013 – Guggenheim Fellowship[14]
• 2014 – Terry Southern Fiction Prize from The Paris Review[11]
• 2014 – Finalist, Folio Prize[34]
• 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 Book Award
• 2019 Winner, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction
• 2020 Finalist, The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

• An essay about The Topeka School and Lerner's other novels at Harper's
• An excerpt from The Topeka School at The New Yorker
• Lerner's page and the MacArthur Foundation
• 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
• Lerner's page at Narrative magazine
• 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