Background
Lerner was born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, which figures in each of his books of poetry.
essayist university professor writer poet
Lerner was born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, which figures in each of his books of poetry.
Brown University.
Lerner is a professor of English at Brooklyn College. He 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. In 2004, Library Journal named it one of the year"s twelve best books of poetry.
He traveled on a Fulbright Scholarship to Madrid, Spain in 2003 where he wrote his second book, Angle of Yaw, which was published in 2006.
Lerner"s third poetry collection, Mean Free Path, was published in 2010. and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for first fiction and the New York Public Library"s Young Lions prize. In 2008, Lerner began editing poetry for Critical Quarterly, a British scholarly publication.
He has taught at California College of the Arts, the University of Pittsburgh, and in 2010 joined the faculty of the Master of Fine Arts program at Brooklyn College. Lerner received a 2015 MacArthur Fellowship.
Lerner"s mother is the psychologist Harriet Lerner.
2003 – Hayden Carruth Award 2003–2004 – Fulbright Fellowship 2006 – Finalist, National Book Award for Angle of Yaw. 2006 – Finalist, Northern California Book for Angle of Yaw 2007 – Kansas Notable Book for Angle of Yaw 2010–2011 – Howard Foundation Fellowship 2011 – Preis der Stadt Münster für internationale Poesie 2011 – Finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Award for first fiction 2012 – Finalist, Young Lions Prize of the New York Public Library 2012 – The Believer Book Award 2012 – Finalist, William Saroyan International Prize for Writing 2012 – Finalist, Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association/Bingham Award 2013 – Finalist, James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2013 – Guggenheim Fellowship 2014 – Terry Southern Fiction Prize from The Paris Review 2014 – Finalist, Folio Prize 2015– Winner, MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
At Brown University he earned a Bachelor of Arts in political theory and an Master of Fine Arts in poetry. His essays, art criticism, and literary criticism have appeared in Art in America, boundary 2, Frieze, Harper"s Magazine, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.
