Masha Gessen
Journalist and nonfiction author
M. Gessen, formerly published as Masha Gessen, is a Russian American journalist and author who has written widely on authoritarian regimes and LGBT rights.
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Born 1967 in Moscow, Russia
About Masha Gessen
Gessen was born in Moscow in 1967 and moved to the United States with their family in 1981. They went back to Moscow in 1991 and worked there as a journalist, reporting on the Chechen Wars. In 2013, after public threats from prominent Russian politicians over their activism, Gessen left Russia for the United States. Gessen writes in both English and Russian. Between 2017 and 2024 they were a staff writer at The New Yorker, and since May 2024 they have worked as an opinion columnist for The New York Times. Gessen won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Opinion Writing, for work published in The New York Times. Gessen has written more than ten nonfiction books. They include The Future Is History, which won the National Book Award, and The Man Without A Face, about the rise of Vladimir Putin.