M. Gessen

M. Gessen (formerly known as Masha Gessen; Russian: Маша Гессен) is a Russian American journalist, author, and translator who has written extensively on LGBT rights and authoritarian regimes. Gessen received the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Opinion Writing for their articles in The New York Times, which the Pulitzer committee called "an illuminating collection of reported essays on rising authoritarian regimes that draw on history and personal experience to probe timely themes of oppression, belonging and exile." Gessen writes primarily in English but also in Russian. In addition to authoring more than 10 nonfiction books, Gessen has been an opinion columnist at The New York Times since May 2024 and was a staff writer at The New Yorker from 2017 to 2024. They have also contributed to 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, and U.S. News & World Report.