Ben Lerner is an American author. He studied at Brown University under the poet C. D. Wright and earned a BA in political science and an MA in poetry.
Lerner’s first poetry collection, «The Lichtenberg Figures» (2004; German «Die Lichtenbergfiguren», translated by Steffen Popp, 2020), explores the structures of language and memory, oscillating between registers such as slang, internet terminology and scientific discourse. In 2011 Lerner received the Preis der Stadt Münster für Internationale Poesie for the book. The poetry collections «Angle of Yaw» (2006) and «Mean Free Path» (2010, translated by Steffen Popp and Monika Rinck) followed, and, after more than a decade, «The Lights» (2023). In the essay «The Hatred of Poetry» (German «Warum hassen wir die Lyrik?», translated by Nikolaus Stingl, 2021) he examines poetry’s marginal position in literary life.
Lerner’s first novel, «Leaving the Atocha Station» (2011; German «Abschied von Atocha», translated by Nikolaus Stingl, 2013), winner of the Believer Book Award, follows a young American poet on a fellowship in Madrid whose staged life as a poet is shaken by the 2004 bombing of the Puerta de Atocha train station. In the novel «10:04» (2014; German «22:04», translated by Nikolaus Stingl, 2016), a brain tumor diagnosis checks a writer’s euphoria over his debut’s success. «The Topeka School» (2019; German «Die Topeka-Schule», translated by Nikolaus Stingl, 2020) is set in Lerner’s hometown in the late 1990s and moves between the protagonist Adam and his parents, the psychologists Jonathan and Jane. In 2026, Lerner’s fourth novel, «Transcription», was published: a narrator travels to Providence to interview his elderly mentor, but beforehand drops his phone in the sink and arrives without a recording device. The novel reflects on the technologies that shape our actions and on the fragility of reality in the digital age.
In 2013, Lerner was a Guggenheim Fellow and a MacArthur Fellow, and has repeatedly been a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Brooklyn.
Last Update: 2026