Gessen's Pussy Riot Book Out Early & Gay Propaganda Event in NYC

Riverhead has rushed an early release of Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot [Kindle] by Masha Gessen, the lesbian journalist who fled Russia with her children last summer. If you missed her tv takedown of the ever-worsening situation there, watch it now. Her critical biography The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin is considered to be among the best. 

Next weekend, Cooper Union is hosting Propaganda: A Celebration of Russian Voices, which will feature Masha Gessen's first public appearance since expatriating from Russia. Her panel is the capstone session of the two-day event, on January 19th at 6:30pm in Cooper Union’s Great Hall. See the full lineup here.

Hip readers will already know Masha's brother Keith Gessen, cofounder of the journal n+1 and author of All the Sad Young Literary Men.