Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Forward 50 2015

Ben Lerner

Ben Lerner, 36, began his writing career as a poet, but his two debut novels, one published in 2011 and the other last year, quickly gained critical acclaim and have both been called “brilliant” and “revolutionary,” among other praise.

This year Lerner received a MacArthur “genius” fellowship of $625,000 for his work.

Though he has turned to fiction in recent years, his novels mirror aspects of his own experiences and integrate his background in poetry.

“Poets really haven’t gotten the news that the novel is also dead,” said Lerner in an interview with The Guardian after his second book, “10:04,” came out. “It’s like some weird homeopathic myth, that you avoid the novel but you are allowed to write one.”

When his first novel, “Leaving the Atocha Station,” came out, he told the Poetry Society of America that the main character finds prose beautiful when it has “poetic possibility.”

“A poem in a novel, or the idea of poetry in a novel, can similarly glimmer, I think,” he said.

Lerner was born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, and won his first award — from the National Forensic League’s speech and debate tournament — the year he graduated high school. Since then, he has secured far more prestigious recognitions, such as a Fulbright scholarship and Guggenheim fellowship before the MacArthur.

“Of course one feels grateful and unworthy and weirded out all at once,” he wrote to the Forward in an email.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.