Ben Lerner

In conversation with Maggie Nelson

Genre-bending poet, novelist, essayist, and critic Ben Lerner has received fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, Howard, and MacArthur Foundations. His first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, won the 2012 Believer Book Award, and excerpts from 10:04 have been awarded The Paris Review‘s Terry Southern Prize. He has published three poetry collections: The Lichtenberg Figures, Angle of Yaw, and Mean Free Path. His new novel, The Topeka School, is a timely scrutiny of contemporary crises in the public sphere: collapse of public speech, trolls of the New Right, and crises of identity among white men. Lerner is a professor of English at Brooklyn College.