Eleanor Lerman
Director of Public Affairs and Publications

As director of public affairs and publications, Eleanor Lerman supports the work of the vice president, public affairs, and oversees the development and production of the Corporation's annual report, its magazine, the Carnegie Reporter, and its other publications, reports and papers. Lerman is also responsible for the Corporation's web site. She joined the foundation as director of publications in 1999 but previously worked for Carnegie Corporation as editorial associate from 1977-1985.

Between 1987-1999, Lerman was director of publications and online services for the American Lung Association, where she founded the organization's desktop publishing department and developed its web site and online fundraising activities. Between 1985 and 1987 she worked as a freelance writer, contributing articles on such diverse topics as Afghan freedom fighters and profiles of prominent comedians to a number of national magazines. Earlier in her career, she worked in the editorial department of the Huxley Institute for Biosocial Research, a nonprofit organization that was involved in disseminating information about the uses of orthomolecular medicine in the treatment of mental illness.

Lerman is the author of four books of poetry, Armed Love, Wesleyan University Press, 1973; Come the Sweet By and By, University of Massachusetts Press, 1975; and The Mystery of Meteors, which was published in 2001 by Sarabande Books and which was named one of the best book of poetry of 2001 by Library Journal; it was also a finalist for the 2002 Balcones Poetry Prize and a nominee for the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Armed Love was nominated for a National Book Award in 1973 and Come the Sweet By and By won the annual Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts Press in 1975. Her most recent book, Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds, was published by Sarabande in 2005. She has also contributed to two nonfiction books authored by John Walsh with Philip Lerman, No Mercy, Pocket Books 1998, and Public Enemies, published by Pocket Books in 2001. In addition, Lerman won the 2002 Joy Bale Boone Award for poetry; in 2006 Post-Soviet History was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. Her first book of short stories, Observers and Other Stories, was published by Artemispress.com in 2002. Recently, Garrison Keillor chose a selection from Lerman's work to read on Writer's Almanac. In 2006, she won the Milton Dorfman Poetry Prize and Our Post-Soviet History Unfolds was awarded the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize for the best poetry book of the year by the Academy of American Poets. In addition, in 2007, she received a Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2008, she received a fiction grant from the Puffin Foundation to support the writing of a book based on the life of Carlos Castaneda. She is a member of PEN and of the Authors Guild.