Portrait
M. Gessen
Born
13 January 1967Moscow, Russia
Journalist and writerUnited States

M. Gessen

A Russian-American journalist who fought Putin’s anti-gay laws in Moscow, had to flee, and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2026.

M. Gessen, formerly known as Masha Gessen, was born in Moscow into a Jewish family. In 1981 the family emigrated to the United States. In 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gessen returned to Moscow as a journalist and became one of the best-known liberal voices in Russia.

Gessen wrote about politics, science and LGBTQ rights and was one of the few openly queer public figures in Russia. Their book “The Man Without a Face” (2012) was one of the first major biographies of Vladimir Putin. When Russia passed its law against “gay propaganda” in 2013 and politicians talked about taking children away from same-sex parents, Gessen left the country with their family.

In the United States Gessen wrote for The New Yorker and since 2024 for The New York Times. “The Future Is History” (2017), about the return of totalitarianism in Russia, won the National Book Award. In 2023 a Russian court sentenced Gessen in absentia to eight years in prison for reporting on the war against Ukraine.

Gessen is non-binary and uses the pronoun “they”. In 2026 they received the Pulitzer Prize for opinion writing.

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