Born on February 4, 1979 and raised in Topeka, Kansas, he is a 1997 graduate of Topeka High School. At Brown University he earned a B.A. in Political Theory and a MFA in Poetry. In 2003 Copper Canyon Press awarded its Hayden Carruth prize to Lerner's cycle of fifty-two loose sonnets, The Lichtenberg Figures. 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. Together with Deb Klowden, Lerner presently edits No: A Journal of the Arts, a magazine of poetry, art, and criticism. In 2008 he began editing poetry for Critical Quarterly, a British academic publication.[2] Lerner is on the faculty of the writing program of the University of Pittsburgh.