Keith Gessen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Keith Gessen | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 1975 Moscow, U.S.S.R.  |
| Occupation | Editor, Writer |
| Nationality | American  |
Keith Gessen (born Kostya Gessen, Moscow, U.S.S.R., 1975)[1] is the co-editor-in-chief of n+1, a twice-yearly magazine of literature, politics, and culture based in New York City.
Born Kostya Gessen,[2][3] he, his parents, and sisters moved to the United States in 1981 "to escape state-enforced anti-Semitism"[2][4] and settled in the Boston area, living in Brighton, Brookline, and Newton, Massachusetts.
He graduated from Harvard College, where his major was Russia in America[citation needed]. 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".[5]
Gessen has written about Russia for The Atlantic and the New York Review of Books.[6] 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 and received mixed reviews. Joyce Carol Oates wrote that "in this debut novel there is much that is charming and beguiling, and much promise,"[7] and Jonathan Franzen has said of Gessen, "it's so delicious the way he writes. I like it a lot."[8] New York Magazine, on the other hand, called it "self-satisfied" and "boringly solipsistic."[9]
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.[10]
[edit] Family and personal life
His mother was a literary critic[11], and his father was a computer scientist.[12]. 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).[4] Her next book, "Blood Matters:From Inherited Illness to Designer Babies, How the World and I Found Ourselves in the Future of the Gene," was released the same year as Gessen's, and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the year, while his was not. 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.[2]
Gessen is divorced.[5][13] He lives in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, with two roommates.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.bu.edu/agni/fiction/print/2004/59-gessen.html
- ^ a b c http://www.arlindo-correia.com/140505.html
- ^ Joanna Smith Rakoff, "Talking with Masha Gessen", Newsday, 2 January 2005
- ^ a b http://www.bloomsbury.com/Authors/details.aspx?tpid=1589
- ^ a b c http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/fashion/27gessen.html
- ^ Wickett, Dan (2005-03-06). "Interview with Keith Gessen". Emerging Writers' Forum. http://www.breaktech.net/EmergingWritersForum/View_Interview.aspx?id=143. Retrieved on 2007-06-27.
- ^ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21316
- ^ http://www.observer.com/2007/no-surprises-national-book-awards-jonathan-franzen-talks-about-being-48
- ^ http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/46203/
- ^ http://youngmanhattanite.com/2008/08/ym-keith-gessen-q.html
- ^ http://www.bigthink.com/media-the-press/10477
- ^ Gabriel Sanders, "Faces Forward: Author Tells Tale of Her Grandmothers' Survival", Forward, 10 December 2004
- ^ http://www.downtownexpress.com/de_269/loveandother.html
[edit] External links
- New York Inquirer — 2006 interview with Keith Gessen about n+1
- "Young Manhattanite" — 2008 interview with Keith Gessen
- "New York Times" — Profile of Gessen, 27 April 2008
