Sonnenberg, Ben

Native New Yorker Ben Sonnenberg, Jr., is best known as the founder and editor of Grand Street, an influential literary and cultural magazine based in New York City in the mid-1980s and 1990s. Sonnenberg's exposure to the New York literary scene began early in his life: he was the son of Benjamin Sonnenberg, the famous press agent who transformed the family home at 19 Gramercy Place into a central hub for the city's business and literary circles. Sonnenberg both resisted and embraced his cosmopolitan upbringing, recalling his childhood as that of a "younger son in a family of great English furniture." In and out of private schools as a child, he eschewed college in favor of a rigorous program of reading and self-education, traveling abroad and establishing close relations with other writers including W.S. Merwin and Ted Hughes, both with whom he would correspond extensively over the next three decades. In 1963, Sonnenberg completed his first play, Jane Street, shortly before returning to New York to pursue his literary career.

In 1981, Sonnenberg invested his inheritance in founding Grand Street, a "little magazine" dedicated to literature, politics, and cultural criticism. Hailed in the tradition of The Dial and the Partisan Review, Grand Street quickly established itself as a major New York literary organ, with Sonnenberg hosting informal gatherings with friends and contributors at his apartment on Riverside Drive. As an editor, Sonnenberg was known for unprecedented generosity and trust in his writers, as well as his oft-spoken desire to enfranchise rising talent: "[I want] the money to go into their pockets," he frequently said of his contributors. Early contributors included writers like Susan Minot and Anne Carson, whose work he assiduously promoted in Grand Street and through private foundations; the magazine also regularly published works by Edward Said, Arthur Danto, Grover Amen, James Salter, Padgett Powell, James Laughlin, Alice Munro, Edward Sorel, and others.

Through the 1980s, Sonnenberg's work at Grand Street was increasingly inhibited by failing health. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of 34 and spent most of his adult life as a paraplegic, composing his correspondence and literary materials by dictation. Sonnenberg retired from the magazine in 1989; in 1991 he published his memoir, Lost Property: Memoirs and Confessions of a Bad Boy, a well-received account of his adolescence and his subsequent years abroad. Sonnenberg continues to write poetry and film criticism, with essays appearing in Raritan, The Nation, and other venues. He lives in New York with his wife, Dorothy Gallagher.

From the guide to the Ben Sonnenberg Papers, 1956-2010, (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)