Date:
Renowned Russian-American Journalist, Author, and Activist
Masha Gessen is an award- winning journalist, author, and activist who was born in Russia and emigrated to the United States. Noted for her opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin, she has also written extensively on LGBT rights. A contributor to numerous newspapers and magazines, Gessen has written several books, most recently Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot (2014).
Gessen is currently working on a new biography on brothers and Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Like the Tsarnaevs, Gessen moved to the Boston area when she was a Russian-speaking teen; she returned to Russia in her 20s to live and work there.
A former Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University, Gessen has written for the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, U.S. News & World Report, Vanity Fair, New Republic, Granta, and Slate.
Community Book Read and Author Luncheon
Tucson JCC Heritage Room • 3800 E. River Rd.
11:30AM-1:00 PM. RSVP by January 26, 2015.
Topic: Esther and Ruzya: What My Grandmothers Taught Me About Victims, Executioners, and Bystanders. Introduction by John Peck, former managing editor of the Arizona Daily Star
Book Selection: Esther and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler’s War and Stalin’s Peace
$20/person; Table of 10/$200 Tickets: Use the attached form or jfsa.org/ mashagessen or contact Suzanne Amador, 577-9393/samador@jfsa.org
The Sally & Ralph Duchin Campus Lecture Series
University of Arizona Hillel Foundation • 1245 E. 2nd St. 4:00-5:00 PM
Topic: What Is It About the Gays?
Free and open to all. No registration or RSVP required.
Book Selection: Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot
The Shaol & Louis Pozez Memorial Lectureship Series
Tucson JCC • 3800 E. River Rd.
7:00-8:30 PM
Topic: Putin’s War Against the West
Free and open to all. No registration or RSVP required.
Book Selection: The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (2013)
In the last two and a half years Putin has gone from being a post-ideological, nostalgia-mongering president to a president with an ideology and a civilizational mission. This talk will explore that mission and how it came to be.
Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist who is the author of Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. She has also written extensively on LGBT rights and has been described as "one of Russia's leading LGBT rights activists."
