Ben
Lerner

Born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, writer and editor Ben Lerner earned a BA in political science and an MFA in creative writing from Brown University. He has served as a Fulbright scholar in Madrid and as a Guggenheim fellow. In 2015 he was awarded a prestigious MacArthur fellowship.

Lerner is the author of several full-length poetry collections, including No Art (2016); Mean Free Path (2010); Angle of Yaw (2006), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award; and the sonnet sequence The Lichtenberg Figures (2004), which won the Hayden Carruth Award, was chosen by Library Journal as one of the year’s 12 best poetry books, and was a Lannan Literary Selection. His poetry has also been included in the anthologies 12×12: Conversations in Poetry and Poetics (2009), New Voices (2008), and Best American Poetry. His novels include The Topeka School (2019), 10:04 (2014), and Leaving the Atocha Station (2011).