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Masha Gessen (born 1967) is an American-Russian journalist, translator, and nonfiction author. They identify as non-binary and use they/them pronouns. Born into an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Russia, in 1981 they moved with their family to the United States to escape anti-Semitism. They returned in 1991 to Moscow, where they worked as a journalist, and covered Russian military activities during the Chechen Wars. In 2013, they were publicly threatened by prominent Russian politicians for their political activism and were forced to leave Russia for the United States. They write in both Russian and English, and has contributed to The New Republic, New Statesman, Granta and Slate. Gessen is a staff writer at The New Yorker, covering international politics, Russia, LGBT rights, and gender issues.
From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene
2008
The Russian Intelligentsia After Communism
1997
How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler's War and Stalin's Peace
2004
Russian Love Stories
2014
Contemporary Fiction by Russian Women
1995
Searching for Stalin's Gulags in Putin's Russia
2018
A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century
2009
2020
The Road to an American Tragedy
2015
How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
2017
The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin
2010
The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region
2016
The Passion of Pussy Riot
2014