Keith Gessen

Infobox Writer
name = Keith Gessen

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imagesize = 150px
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birthdate = 1975
birthplace = Moscow, U.S.S.R. flagicon|USSR
deathdate =
deathplace =
occupation = Editor, Writer
nationality = American flagicon|US
spouse =
children =
website =

Keith Gessen (born Kostya Gessen, Moscow, U.S.S.R., 1975) [http://www.bu.edu/agni/fiction/print/2004/59-gessen.html] is the editor-in-chief of "n+1", a twice-yearly magazine of literature, politics, and culture based in New York City.

Born Kostya Gessen, [http://www.arlindo-correia.com/140505.html] [Joanna Smith Rakoff, "Talking with Masha Gessen", Newsday, 2 January 2005] he, his parents, and sisters moved to the United States in 1981 "to escape state-enforced anti-Semitism" [http://www.bloomsbury.com/Authors/details.aspx?tpid=1589] [http://www.arlindo-correia.com/140505.html] and settled in the Boston area, living in Brighton, Brookline, and Newton, Massachusetts.

He graduated from Harvard College, where his major was Russia in AmericaFact|date=August 2008. Gessen completed the course work for his MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University in 2004 but did not receive a degree, having failed to submit "a final original work of fiction". [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/fashion/27gessen.html]

Gessen has written about Russia for The Atlantic and the New York Review of Books. [cite web
last = Wickett
first = Dan
title = Interview with Keith Gessen
publisher = Emerging Writers' Forum
date = 2005-03-06
url=http://www.breaktech.net/EmergingWritersForum/View_Interview.aspx?id=143
accessdate = 2007-06-27 ] In 2005, Dalkey Archive Press published Gessen's translation of Svetlana Alexievich’s "Tchernobylskaia Molitva" (Voices from Chernobyl), an oral history of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Gessen has also written about books for magazines including "Dissent", "Slate", and "New York", where he was the regular book critic.

His first novel, "All the Sad Young Literary Men", was published in April 2008.

In an August 2008 interview, Gessen revealed that he is moving back to Russia for a year, returning in June 2009, while his sister attends graduate school in the United States. [http://youngmanhattanite.com/2008/08/ym-keith-gessen-q.html]

Family and personal life

His mother was a literary critic [http://www.bigthink.com/media-the-press/10477] , and his father was a computer scientist. [Gabriel Sanders, "Faces Forward: Author Tells Tale of Her Grandmothers' Survival", Forward, 10 December 2004] . His sister, Masha Gessen (born 1967), is the author of "Ester and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler's War and Stalin's Peace" (a.k.a. "Two Babushkas"). [http://www.bloomsbury.com/Authors/details.aspx?tpid=1589] 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. [http://www.arlindo-correia.com/140505.html]

Gessen is divorced. [http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_269/loveandother.html] [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/fashion/27gessen.html] He lives in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, with two roommates. [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/fashion/27gessen.html]

References

External links

* [http://www.nyinquirer.com/nyinquirer/2006/11/an_interview_wi.html "New York Inquirer"] — 2006 interview with Keith Gessen about "n+1"
* [http://youngmanhattanite.com/2008/08/ym-keith-gessen-q.html "Young Manhattanite"] — 2008 interview with Keith Gessen
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/fashion/27gessen.html "New York Times"] — Profile of Gessen, 27 April 2008