Profile Text
Birth Name: Konstantin Alexandrovich Gessen
Place of Birth: Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Russia)
Date of Birth: 9 January, 1975
Ethnicity: Ashkenazi Jewish
Keith Gessen is an American novelist, journalist, and literary translator. He co-founded, and is co-editor of, literary magazine n+1.
Keith was born in Moscow, to a Jewish family. His father is a computer scientist and his mother is a literary critic. He is the brother of journalist, author, translator, and activist Masha Gessen/M. Gessen. When he was six, in 1981, his family moved to the U.S. as part of the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program, settling in the Boston area, in Brighton, Brookline, and Newton. Keith is married to author, novelist, and blogger Emily Gould.
Keith’s paternal grandfather was named Boris Gessen.
Keith’s paternal grandmother was named Ester Goldberg (the daughter of Jakub Goldberg and Bella). Esther was born in Bialystok, Poland, and moved to Moscow in 1940. She was a translator for a foreign literary magazine. Jakub died in 1943 in the Holocaust, in either the Białystok Ghetto or a concentration camp; he was a Judenrat member.
Keith’s maternal grandfather was named Samuil Minkin. Samuil died during WWII.
Keith’s maternal grandmother was named Ruzya/Rozalia Solodovnik. Rozalia was born in Pereslavl-Zalessky, Yaroslavl, and was a Soviet government censor of dispatches filed by foreign reporters.
Source: Genealogy of Keith Gessen – https://www.geni.com