To member directory

M. Gessen

The New York Times
Area
Leadership, Policy, and Communications
Specialty
Journalism, Media, and Communications
Elected
2026

M. Gessen is an Opinion Columnist for The New York Times. They won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for opinion writing and the 2024 George Polk Award for opinion writing. Gessen is the author of 11 books, including The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (2018), which won the National Book Award in 2017, and Surviving Autocracy (2021).

Gessen was born in the Soviet Union. When they were a teenager, their family moved to the U.S., but Gessen returned in 1981, and spent years studying and reporting on Vladimir Putin, contributing to such publications as Vanity Fair and The New York Times. They were active in gay and trans rights groups.

Gessen moved back to the U.S. in 2013; in 2024 they were convicted in absentia in Russia, accused of spreading “false information” about the Ukraine war, and they were sentenced to eight years in prison.

Gessen has received Guggenheim and Carnegie fellowships and taught at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, Bard College, and Amherst College.

Last Updated
To member directory