Masha Gessen

Masha Gessen (born Maria Alexandrovna Gessen (Russian: Мари́я Алекса́ндровна Ге́ссен, IPA: [maˈrʲijə ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvnəˈɡʲesən]) 13 January 1967) is a Russian-American journalist, author, translator and activist who has been an outspoken critic of the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, and the President of the United States, Donald Trump.Gessen is nonbinary and trans and uses they/them pronouns. Gessen has written extensively on LGBT rights. Described as "Russia's leading LGBT rights activist," they have said that for many years they were "probably the only publicly out gay person in the whole country." They now live in New York with their wife and children. 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. Gessen worked as a translator on the FX TV channel historical drama The Americans. 2Early life and education Gessen was born into a Jewish family in Moscow to Alexander and Yelena Gessen. Their paternal grandmother Ester Goldberg, the daughter of a socialist mother and a Zionist father, was born in Białystok, Poland, in 1923 and emigrated to Moscow in 1940. Ester's father Jakub Goldberg was murdered in 1943, either in the Białystok Ghetto or a concentration cam