Poet, critic, and novelist Ben Lerner, a guest of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, will present a free reading at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 7, in the Frank Conroy Reading Room of the Dey House.

Ben Lerner

Lerner, who teaches at Brooklyn College, received the Hayden Carruth Award for The Lichtenberg Figures, which the Library Journal named one of the year's 12 best books of poetry in 2004. His second book, Angle of Yaw, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Lerner's third poetry collection, Mean Free Path, was published in 2010.

His poetry has also been included in the anthologies Best American Poetry, New Voices, and 12x12: Conversations in Poetry and Poetics.

His first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station—about a young writer on a poetry fellowship in Spain—appeared last year and was named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and New York Magazine. The book also won the Believer Book Award.

In 2002 Lerner co-founded No: a journal of the arts, and he has also served as the poetry editor for the Critical Quarterly.

The Writers' Workshop is a unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Graduate College.

For accommodations at the event, contact the workshop at 319-335-0416.