Keith Gessen

Last updated

Keith Gessen
Keith Gessen.jpg
BornKonstantin Alexandrovich Gessen
(1975-01-09) January 9, 1975 (age 49)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Occupation
  • Editor
  • writer
  • academic
NationalityAmerican
Education
Relatives Masha Gessen (sibling)

Keith A. Gessen (born January 9, 1975) [2] [3] is a Russian-born American novelist, journalist, and literary translator. He is co-founder and co-editor of American literary magazine n+1 and an assistant professor of journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. [1] In 2008 he was named a "5 under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation.

Contents

Early life and education

Born Konstantin Alexandrovich Gessen (Russian:Константи́н Алекса́ндрович Ге́ссен) into a Jewish family in Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, [4] he and his parents and sibling moved to the United States in 1981. They settled in the Boston area, living in Brighton, Brookline and Newton, Massachusetts.

Gessen's mother was a literary critic [5] and his father is a computer scientist now specializing in forensics. [6] His siblings are Masha Gessen, Daniel Gessen and Philip Gessen. His maternal grandmother, Ruzya Solodovnik, was a Soviet government censor of dispatches filed by foreign reporters such as Harrison Salisbury; his paternal grandmother, Ester Goldberg Gessen, was a translator for a foreign literary magazine. [4]

Gessen graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in history and literature in 1998. [1] He completed the course-work for his M.F.A. in creative writing from Syracuse University in 2004 but did not initially receive a degree, having failed to submit "a final original work of fiction." [7] According to his Columbia University faculty biography, he ultimately received the degree. [1]

Career

Gessen with Russian novelist Ludmilla Petrushevskaya in 2009 Keith Gessen and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya Shankbone 2009 NYC.jpg
Gessen with Russian novelist Ludmilla Petrushevskaya in 2009

Gessen has written about Russia for The New Yorker , The London Review of Books , The Atlantic , and the New York Review of Books . [8] In 2004–2005, he was the regular book critic for New York magazine. In 2005, Dalkey Archive Press published Gessen's translation of Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl (Russian : Tchernobylskaia Molitva), an oral history of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. In 2009, Penguin published his translation (with Anna Summers) of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales.

Gessen's first novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men , was published in April 2008 and received mixed reviews. Joyce Carol Oates wrote that "in this debut novel there is much that is charming and beguiling, and much promise". [9] The novelist Jonathan Franzen has said of Gessen, "It's so delicious the way he writes. I like it a lot." [10] New York Magazine, on the other hand, called the novel "self-satisfied" and "boringly solipsistic". [11]

In 2010, Gessen edited and introduced Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager, a book about the financial crisis. [12] In 2011, he became involved in the Occupy Movement in New York City. He co-edited the OCCUPY! Gazette, a newspaper reporting on Occupy Wall Street and sponsored by n+1 . [13] On November 17, 2011, Gessen was arrested by the New York City police while covering and participating in an Occupy protest at the New York Stock Exchange. [14] [15] He wrote about his experience for The New Yorker . [16]

In 2015, Gessen co-edited City by City: Dispatches from the American Metropolis, which was named a "Best Summer Read of 2015" by Publishers Weekly . [17]

In 2018, Gessen's second novel, A Terrible Country, was published. In March 2019, it was serialized on BBC Radio 4. [18]

Gessen wrote a non-fiction memoir about raising his son Raffi, titled Raising Raffi: The First Five Years, which was published in 2022. [19]

Personal life

Gessen is married to the writer Emily Gould [20] and was previously married when he arrived in New York City at age 22. [7] [21] As of 2008, he resided in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. [7]

Bibliography

Novels

Non-fiction

Translations

Critical studies and reviews of Gessen's work

Raising Raffi

Notes

  1. Available on website only.
  2. Online version is titled "How Stalin became Stalinist".
  3. Online version is titled "A Ukrainian novel looks between the lines of war".
  4. Online version is titled "Liberals, radicals, and the making of a literary masterpiece".

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John McPhee</span> American writer (born 1931)

John Angus McPhee is an American writer. He is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. He is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the category General Nonfiction, and he won that award on the fourth occasion in 1999 for Annals of the Former World. In 2008, he received the George Polk Career Award for his "indelible mark on American journalism during his nearly half-century career". Since 1974, McPhee has been the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tatyana Tolstaya</span> Russian writer

Tatyana Nikitichna Tolstaya is a Russian writer, TV host, publicist, novelist, and essayist from the Tolstoy family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lyudmila Ulitskaya</span> Russian author

Lyudmila Evgenyevna Ulitskaya is an internationally acclaimed modern Russian novelist and short-story writer who, in 2014, was awarded the prestigious Austrian State Prize for European Literature for her oeuvre. In 2006 she published Daniel Stein, Interpreter(Даниэль Штайн, переводчик), a novel dealing with the Holocaust and the need for reconciliation between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She won the 2012 Park Kyong-ni Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geraldine Brooks (writer)</span> Australian-American journalist and novelist (born 1955)

Geraldine Brooks is an Australian-American journalist and novelist whose 2005 novel March won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

James Douglas Graham Wood is an English[a] literary critic, essayist and novelist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joshua Cohen (writer)</span> American novelist and story writer

Joshua Aaron Cohen is an American novelist and story writer, best known for his works Witz (2010), Book of Numbers (2015), and Moving Kings (2017). Cohen won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Netanyahus (2021).

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are literary translators best known for their collaborative English translations of classic Russian literature. Individually, Pevear has also translated into English works from French, Italian, and Greek. The couple's collaborative translations have been nominated three times and twice won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. Their translation of Dostoevsky's The Idiot also won the first Efim Etkind Translation Prize.

<i>n+1</i> American literary magazine

n+1 is a New York–based American literary magazine that publishes social criticism, political commentary, essays, art, poetry, book reviews, and short fiction. It is published in print three times annually with regular articles being published online. Each print issue averages around 200 pages in length.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Lerner</span> American writer

Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright, Guggenheim, and MacArthur Foundations, Lerner has been a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among many other honors. Lerner teaches at Brooklyn College, where he was named a Distinguished Professor of English in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dexter Filkins</span> American journalist and war correspondent (born 1961)

Dexter Price Filkins is an American journalist known primarily for his coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for The New York Times. He was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his dispatches from Afghanistan, and won a Pulitzer in 2009 as part of a team of Times reporters for their dispatches from Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has been called "the premier combat journalist of his generation". He currently writes for The New Yorker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Greenman</span> American novelist and magazine journalist

Ben Greenman is an American novelist, magazine journalist, and publishing executive who has written more than twenty fiction and non-fiction books, including collaborations with pop-music artists like Questlove, George Clinton, Brian Wilson, Gene Simmons, and others. His books have been translated into many other languages, including Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, and more. From 2000 to 2014, he was an editor at The New Yorker. He now serves as executive editor of Auwa Books, an imprint founded by Questlove in collaboration with Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Svetlana Alexievich</span> Belarusian investigative journalist and essayist

Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich is a Belarusian investigative journalist, essayist and oral historian who writes in Russian. She was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time". She is the first writer from Belarus to receive the award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lyudmila Petrushevskaya</span> Russian writer, novelist and playwright (born 1938)

Lyudmila Stefanovna Petrushevskaya is a Russian writer, novelist and playwright. She began her career writing short stories and plays, which were often censored by the Soviet government, and following perestroika, published a number of well-respected works of prose.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Samuels (writer)</span> American non-fiction and fiction writer (born 1967)

David Samuels is an American non-fiction and fiction writer. He is the editor of County Highway, a magazine in the form of a 19th-century American broadsheet which he founded with Walter Kirn. He is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, a longtime contributing editor at Harper's Magazine; a contributor to The Atlantic, N+1, The New Yorker and other magazines; and the literary editor of Tablet.

<i>All the Sad Young Literary Men</i> Novel by Keith Gessen

All the Sad Young Literary Men is the debut novel of Keith Gessen, the founder of the journal n+1. It was published by Viking in April 2008.

<i>Voices from Chernobyl</i> Book by Svetlana Alexievich

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, published as Chernobyl Prayer: A Chronicle of the Future in the United Kingdom, is a book about the Chernobyl disaster by the Belarusian Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich. At the time of the disaster, Alexievich was a journalist living in Minsk, the capital of what was then the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Alexievich interviewed more than 500 eyewitnesses, including firefighters, liquidators, politicians, physicians, physicists, and ordinary citizens over a period of 10 years. The book relates the psychological and personal tragedy of the Chernobyl accident, and explores the experiences of individuals and how the disaster affected their lives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Masha Gessen</span> Russian-American journalist and activist

Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist, author, translator. Gessen is nonbinary and trans and uses they/them pronouns. Gessen has written extensively on LGBT rights.

Philip P. Pan is an American journalist, author, and International Editor at The New York Times. He previously worked as bureau chief in Moscow and Beijing for The Washington Post.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vasily Ignatenko</span> Soviet firefighter (1961–1986)

Vasily Ivanovich Ignatenko was a Soviet firefighter who was among the first responders to the Chernobyl disaster. He worked as an electrician before being conscripted into the Soviet Armed Forces in 1980, where he completed his two years of service as a military firefighter. Afterwards, he took up employment as a paramilitary firefighter with Fire Brigade No. 6, which was based out of Pripyat. On 26 April 1986, Ignatenko's fire brigade was involved in mitigating the immediate aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster; fighting the fires that broke out following the initial explosion of Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. While on site, Ignatenko received a high dose of radiation, leading to his death at a radiological hospital in Moscow eighteen days later.

<i>There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbors Baby</i> Short stories by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairytales is a collection of short stories written by Russian author and playwright Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. These stories were selected and translated from the Russian language into English by Keith Gessen and Anna Summers. Additionally, Gessen and Summers wrote the Introduction. This English translation was published in 2009 by Penguin Books.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Keith Gessen | School of Journalism". journalism.columbia.edu. Retrieved November 16, 2017.
  2. U.S. Public Records Index Vol 1 & 2 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.), 2010.
  3. "AGNI Online: Right of Return by Keith Gessen". www.bu.edu. Retrieved November 16, 2017.
  4. 1 2 Joanna Smith Rakoff. "Talking with Masha Gessen, Newsday , January 2, 2005.
  5. Keith Gessen on Rediscovering Russia, "Big Think" May 13, 2008
  6. Gabriel Sanders, "Faces Forward: Author Tells Tale of Her Grandmothers' Survival", Forward , December 10, 2004
  7. 1 2 3 Itzkoff, Dave (April 27, 2008). "A Literary Critic Drops His Ax and Picks Up His Pen". The New York Times. Retrieved May 7, 2010.
  8. Wickett, Dan (March 6, 2005). "Interview with Keith Gessen". Emerging Writers' Forum. Archived from the original on June 12, 2007. Retrieved June 27, 2007.
  9. Oates, Joyce Carol (May 1, 2008). "Youth!". The New York Review of Books. ISSN   0028-7504 . Retrieved November 16, 2017.
  10. Neyfakh, Leon (November 15, 2007). "No Surprises at National Book Awards; Jonathan Franzen Talks About Being 48". Observer. Retrieved November 16, 2017.
  11. "Is This Book Worth Getting?". NYMag.com. Retrieved November 16, 2017.
  12. D. Garner, Here’s Why the Cookie Crumbled. July 13, 2010.
  13. "Occupy and Space". n+1. January 5, 2012. Retrieved November 16, 2017.
  14. MiriMarkow (November 17, 2011), OccupyGessen, archived from the original on December 21, 2021, retrieved November 16, 2017
  15. "Editors of new Verso book Occupy! arrested today at N17 protest". Versobooks.com. Retrieved November 16, 2017.
  16. Gessen, Keith (November 28, 2011). "Central Booking". The New Yorker. ISSN   0028-792X . Retrieved November 16, 2017.
  17. "Best Summer Books, 2015 Publishers Weekly". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved November 16, 2017.
  18. Writer: Keith Gessen; Reader: Trevor White; Abridged by: Jill Waters and Isobel Creed; Produced by Jill Waters (March 11, 2019). "A Terrible Country". A Terrible Country. BBC. BBC Radio 4 . Retrieved March 15, 2019.
  19. Garner, Dwight (June 6, 2022). "'Raising Raffi,' a Father's Lucid Book About a Chaotic Scene". The New York Times. Retrieved June 7, 2022.
  20. Hicklin, Aaron (December 14, 2014). "Overstepping the bounds: how blogger Emily Gould has been oversharing". The Observer. ISSN   0029-7712 . Retrieved November 16, 2017.
  21. Norris, Sarah (June 27 – July 3, 2008). "Love and other indoor sports". Downtown Express. Vol. 21, no. 7. Community Media LLC. Retrieved November 16, 2017. Born in Russia, [Gessen] grew up in Massachusetts, attended Harvard, and then moved to New York at age 22 with a wife, from whom he is now divorced.