12 Facts About Ben Lerner

Benjamin S Lerner was born on February 4,1979 and 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.

Ben Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.

Ben Lerner was born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, which figures in each of his books of poetry.

Ben 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.

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

In 2003 Ben 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.

Ben 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 Prize for first fiction and the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award.

In 2023, Ben Lerner published his fourth full-length book of poetry, both verse and prose poems, The Lights.

In 2008 Ben Lerner began editing poetry for Critical Quarterly, a British scholarly publication.

Ben Lerner 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.

Ben Lerner 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.