Masha Gessen

Masha Gessen is a staff writer at The New Yorker and teaches at Amherst College and is the author of several books, including the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Gessen’s other books include The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin and The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy. She was previously an editor at the Russian popular-science magazine Vokrug Sveta, from which she was dismissed for refusing to cover an event involving Russian president Vladimir Putin hang-gliding. A New America Fellow and the recipient of numerous awards, Gessen has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Fellowship.

Photo credit: Tanya Sazansky