Ben Lerner: Transcription — in Conversation with Alexandra Schwartz
Novelist Ben Lerner launches his new book Transcription, exploring memory, loss, and literary devices, in conversation with New Yorker writer Alexandra Schwartz.
Why we picked this
Lerner is one of the few novelists whose work genuinely moves between poetry and prose, criticism and fiction. Hearing him talk about process with Schwartz, who matches his precision, is the real event here.
Ben Lerner launches his latest novel Transcription at Pioneer Works, the Red Hook arts space where he serves as an advisor. The novel follows a journalist traveling to Providence to interview a 90-year-old mentor, only to lose his recording device, unspooling a dreamlike meditation on memory, fatherhood, and the tools we use to preserve or erase the past.
Lerner is a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College and the author of The Topeka School and 10:04, novels that have redefined the boundary between autofiction and traditional narrative. Alexandra Schwartz, a staff writer at The New Yorker and National Book Critics Circle award recipient, joins as conversation partner.
Pre-signed copies of Transcription will be available for purchase at the event.