Ben Lerner

1979 –
Read poems by this poet

Ben Lerner was born in Topeka, Kansas, on February 4, 1979. He earned a BA in political theory and an MFA in poetry from Brown University.

Lerner is the author of four poetry collections: The Lights: Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2023); Mean Free Path (Copper Canyon Press, 2010); Angle of Yaw (Copper Canyon Press, 2006); and The Lichtenberg Figures (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), winner of the 2003 Hayden Carruth Award. 

Lerner is also the author of four novels: Transcription (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025); The Topeka School (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019);10:04 (Faber & Faber, 2014); and Leaving the Atocha Station (Coffee House Press, 2011).

Lerner is the recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Howard Foundation. In 2011, he became the first American to win the Preis der Stadt Münster für Internationale Poesie for the German translation of The Lichtenberg Figures. In 2015, he was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship.

Lerner teaches English at Brooklyn College and lives in Brooklyn.