Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Russian Federation)
Nationality
Russian
Citizenship
Russia
United States
Occupations
Journalist
author
activist
Spouses
Svetlana Generalova
(m. 2004, divorced)
Darya Oreshkina
Children
3
Relatives
Keith Gessen (brother)
Masha Gessen (Russian: Мари́я "Маша" Алекса́ндровна Ге́ссен; born 13 January 1967) is a Russian-American journalist, author, translator,[1][2] and activist who has been an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.[3]
Gessen is nonbinary and trans and uses they/them pronouns.[4][5] Gessen has written extensively on LGBT rights.[6] Described as "Russia's leading LGBT rights activist",[7] Gessen has said that for many years they were "probably the only publicly out gay person in the whole country".[8] They now live in New York with their wife and children.[9]
Gessen writes primarily in English but also in their native Russian. In addition to being the author of several non-fiction books, they have been a prolific contributor to such publications as The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, New Statesman, Granta, Slate, Vanity Fair, Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, and U.S. News & World Report. Since 2017, they have been a staff writer for The New Yorker.
^"Masha Gessen". Contemporary Authors Online. 2016. Retrieved 16 January 2017.
^Thomas, June (21 April 2016). "The Art of the Perfect Subtitle". Slate. ISSN 1091-2339. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
^Gessen, Masha (10 November 2016). "Autocracy: Rules for Survival". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 16 January 2017.
^Gessen, Masha [@mashagessen] (23 June 2020). "I avoided the topic of pronouns for a while" (Tweet). Retrieved 7 August 2020 – via Twitter.
^"Маша Гессен: о Трампе, тестостероне и терроре". Youtube. Archived from the original on 20 December 2021. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
^Gessen, Masha (9 October 2019). "The Supreme Court Considers L.G.B.T. Rights, but Can't Stop Talking About Bathrooms". The New Yorker. Retrieved 9 October 2019.
^UNC. "Masha Gessen: "The Rise of Radical 'Family Values' in Russia". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
^Hayes, Chris. "Russian Journalist Gives a Snapshot of Gay Life in Russia Masha Gessen w Chris Hayes". MSNBC. Retrieved 15 May 2014.[dead YouTube link]
^"Masha and Keith Gessen on Writing About Russia". The New Yorker. 17 March 2019. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
MashaGessen (Russian: Мари́я "Маша" Алекса́ндровна Ге́ссен; born 13 January 1967) is a Russian-American journalist, author, translator, and activist who...
Massachusetts. Gessen's mother was a literary critic and his father is a computer scientist now specializing in forensics. His siblings are MashaGessen, Daniel...
mother. Perelman has avoided journalists and other members of the media. MashaGessen, author of a biography about Perelman, Perfect Rigour: A Genius and the...
journalist, and editor MashaGessen (born 1967), Russian and American journalist, author, translator, and activist Sergey Gessen [ru] (1887-1950), Russian...
for a suspension of MashaGessen's prize out of objection to their essay "In the Shadow of the Holocaust" in The New Yorker. Gessen compared the Blockade...
mountains of useless information produced by the KGB," Russian-American MashaGessen wrote in their 2012 biography of Putin. His work was also downplayed...
photographer Roy Lichtenstein, pop artist Tan Dun, composer and conductor MashaGessen, journalist and activist Kelly Reichardt, film director and screenwriter...
living in a two-room flat in a concrete block in the suburbs of Moscow. MashaGessen wrote that they faced a dilemma raising Mikhail: “Speak your mind about...
best theory for explaining the mysterious death of Putin's mentor by MashaGessen, Business Insider, 2015 "СВЯЗНОЙ С ПРОШЛЫМ" [Connected with the Past]...
given the unforeseeable nature of emergencies. "In Schmitt's terms," MashaGessen wrote in Surviving Autocracy (2020), when an emergency "shakes up the...
[of Russia] effectively [is] the mafia." Russian-American journalist MashaGessen has also described Russia as a "mafia state". According to the New Statesman...
ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on 30 December 2023. Gessen, Masha (21 December 2023). "MashaGessen Responds to Controversy After Comparing Gaza to a Nazi...
2023. Archived from the original on 22 November 2023. Gessen, Masha (21 December 2023). "MashaGessen Responds to Controversy After Comparing Gaza to a Nazi...
Encyclopaedia Judaica. Archived from the original on January 16, 2017. MashaGessen (September 7, 2016). "'Sad And Absurd': The U.S.S.R.'s Disastrous Effort...
MashaGessen on charges of spreading "false information" about the Russian army's actions in Ukraine. In December 2023, it was reported that Gessen was...
night, even if it didn't have hers the day after." The New Yorker's MashaGessen was particularly impressed with Wolf's criticism of journalism, praising...
bbc.com (in Russian). 25 November 2022. Retrieved 22 December 2022. MashaGessen (26 February 2022). "Russia's Last Independent TV Channel Covers the...
Russian-American journalist MashaGessen on charges of spreading "false information" about the Russian army's actions in Ukraine. Gessen was accused of spreading...
opposition, Putin has been described as a dictator. Putin biographer MashaGessen has stated that "Putin is a dictator," comparing him to Alexander Lukashenko...
Archived from the original on May 26, 2022. Retrieved April 21, 2013. MashaGessen (2015). The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy. Riverhead Books...
possibility of organised domestic terrorism in Russia." In The New Yorker, MashaGessen mused that "either the National Republican Army is a new group using...
authorities as the anthem of the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. According to MashaGessen, the metamorphosis of the eighth commandment ("some animals are more...
MashaGessen on charges of spreading "false information" about the Russian army's actions in Ukraine. In December 2023, it was reported that Gessen was...
Archived from the original on 25 June 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2017. Gessen, Masha (2012). The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin...
2021. "Reviews: 'Leaving Time,' by Jodi Picoult, and 'The Brothers,' by MashaGessen". Star Tribune. Retrieved August 14, 2021. Yvonne McKenzie (August 20...