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Ben Lerner

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Ben Lerner
Lerner in 2015
Lerner in 2015
Born (1979-02-04) February 4, 1979 (age 45)
Topeka, Kansas, U.S.
EducationBrown University (BA, MFA)
GenrePoetry, novels, essays
Notable awardsFulbright Scholar
Guggenheim Fellowship
Believer Book Award
MacArthur Fellowship

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]

Life and work

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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 Book Review called Lerner's 2019 novel The Topeka School "a high-water mark in recent American fiction."[14] 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.[15] 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.[16] The Topeka School, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.[17]

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".[18]

In 2008 Lerner began editing poetry for Critical Quarterly, a British scholarly publication.[19] In 2016 he became the first poetry editor at Harper's.[20] 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.[21] 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.[22]

Bibliography

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Poetry

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  • 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.

Novels

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Non-fiction

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  • The Hatred of Poetry. FSG Originals, 2016.

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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Awards

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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 2016-09-26.
  2. ^ "Writers Speak | Ben Lerner in conversation with Duncan White". mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu.
  3. ^ a b "2020 Pulitzer Prizes". www.pulitzer.org. Retrieved 2023-11-30.
  4. ^ "CUNY Trustees Approve New Labor Contracts – CUNY Newswire". Archived from the original on 2016-09-22. Retrieved 2016-07-04.
  5. ^ Link (2006-12-05). "Silliman's Blog". Ronsilliman.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2011-06-19.
  6. ^ Blankenship, Bill (March 9, 2005). "Young poet to read works at Washburn". The Topeka Capital-Journal. Retrieved May 7, 2014.
  7. ^ Lerner, Ben (January 14, 2016). "Postscript: C.D. Wright, 1949-2016". The New Yorker.
  8. ^ "Ben Lerner's First Time". The Paris Review. 16 February 2016. Retrieved June 27, 2016.
  9. ^ "Ben Lerner". Narrative Magazine. 2008-12-15. Archived from the original on 14 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-19.
  10. ^ a b "Ben Lerner Wins the Believer Book Award". Archived from the original on 3 January 2015. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  11. ^ Dyer, Geoff (2012-07-05). "Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner – review". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2016-11-21. Retrieved 2016-12-11.
  12. ^ a b The Paris Review (2014-03-12). "Emma Cline Wins Plimpton Prize; Ben Lerner Wins Terry Southern Prize". The Paris Review. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  13. ^ 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.
  14. ^ Hallberg, Garth Risk (2019-10-03). "Ben Lerner's 'The Topeka School' Revisits the Debates of the '90s". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-10-05.
  15. ^ "The 10 Best Books of 2019". The New York Times. 22 November 2019.
  16. ^ a b "Ben Lerner - John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation". Archived from the original on 2013-04-15. Retrieved 2013-04-12.
  17. ^ Maher, John (May 4, 2020). "Moser, Whitehead, McDaniel, Grandin, Boyer, Brown Win 2020 Pulitzers". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  18. ^ Javadizadeh, Kamran (11 September 2023). "Close Encounters". The New Yorker. Retrieved July 3, 2024.
  19. ^ Gavin, Alice (2008-04-16). "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.
  20. ^ McMorris, Mark (March 2016). "The Drums of Marrakesh". Harper's Magazine. Archived from the original on 2016-05-02. Retrieved 2016-04-04.
  21. ^ "Brooklyn College English Department – MFA Faculty". Depthome.brooklyn.cuny.edu. Archived from the original on 2011-09-03. Retrieved 2011-06-19.
  22. ^ Sheehan, Dan (2024-11-07). "Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions". Literary Hub. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  23. ^ "FSG's Favorite Books of 2013". Work in Progress. 2013-12-19. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  24. ^ "Ben Lerner", University of Pittsburgh. Archived March 15, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  25. ^ "Acclaimed young poet Ben Lerner relocates to Pittsburgh. – Books – Book Reviews & Features – Pittsburgh City Paper". Pittsburghcitypaper.ws. Archived from the original on 14 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-19.
  26. ^ "National Book Award 2006". Nationalbook.org. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 19 June 2011.
  27. ^ "Poetry Flash:NCBRAwards". Poetry Flash. Archived from the original on 2008-05-13.
  28. ^ "New Fellows". Brown.edu. Archived from the original on 7 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-19.
  29. ^ "Stadt Münster: Kulturamt – Lyrikertreffen". Muenster.de. Archived from the original on 17 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-19.
  30. ^ "Book Prizes – Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Los Angeles Times". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2017-06-10. Retrieved 2012-03-13.
  31. ^ "The New York Public Library's 2012 Young Lions Fiction Award Finalists Announced". Flavorwire. 14 March 2012. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  32. ^ "2012 Saroyan Prize Shortlist". Archived from the original on 2012-05-29. Retrieved 2012-05-19.
  33. ^ "Finalist for the 2012 PEN/Bingham Award". Star Tribune.
  34. ^ "Last year's shortlist | James Tait Black Prizes". Archived from the original on 2013-04-29. Retrieved 2013-07-22.
  35. ^ Kellogg, Carolyn (2015-02-09). "Folio Prize shortlist includes Ben Lerner, Colm Toibin, Ali Smith". The Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2016-11-27. Retrieved 2014-11-26.
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