“Let me walk to the edge of genre” Ben Lerner’s Poetry, Fiction, criticism and artistic collaborations

With three volumes of poetry, three novels, a book-length essay on poetry, and collaborations with artists resulting in four artists’ books, Ben Lerner has established himself as one of the most important writers of his generation in the United States today.

While his poetry and collaborations with artists have been enthusiastically received, the author’s widespread and international success derives principally from his novels, which have generated a considerable number of reviews and scholarly articles since the publication of Leaving the Atocha Station in 2011. These novels are not only notable in how they disturb conventional notions regarding the distinction between the “factual” and the “fictive,” history and fable, on both formal and thematic levels. They additionally rupture generic boundaries in the most material way, often incorporating into fictional contexts poems, essays, prose fragments, or in one instance a short story that have previously been published under the name “Ben Lerner,” thereby repurposing and re-using writing in ways which trouble many conceptions of authorship and identity, and breaking apart the closed space of “fiction” as such.

This conference will address the full scope of Lerner’s writing and aesthetic endeavors since the publication of his first volume of poetry, The Lichtenberg Figures (2004), so as to better observe the circulation between the different art forms as well the reflections they generate on creation in the contemporary world.