Masha Gessen is a journalist and the author of 10 books of nonfiction, most recently Surviving Autocracy. Their book The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia won the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Gessen is also the author of the national best seller The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (2012). Gessen is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a national fellow with New America Foundation. Gessen has served as vice president of PEN America.