Masha Gessen © Svenya Generalova

JOURNALIST

United States / Russia

Biography

Masha Gessen, born 13 January 1967, is a Russian and United States journalist and author. She is a militant lesbian and an activist for the rights of sexual minorities. The mass media mentioned her as a member of the board of directors for the Moscow LGBT human rights organization "Triangle" from 1993 to 1998. She writes in both Russian and English, and has contributed to The New Republic, New Statesman, Granta, Slate and Vanity Fair, and US News & World Report. Gessen, author of six previous books about Russia, shot into the limelight earlier this year when she released The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, unarguably the most definitive, well-researched biography of Russia’s ambitious President. Her investigative journalism antecedents are evident in the tapping of previously inaccessible sources to document how Putin “seized control of media, sent political rivals and critics into exile or to the grave and smashed the country’s fragile electoral system, concentrating power in the hands of his cronies.”