How to Tell the Stories of Immigration
On December 3, at a gathering in New York, the fourth annual Hitchens Prize was awarded to the journalist Masha Gessen, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of many books, including The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. The prize was created by the Dennis and Victoria Ross Foundation, to honor the late Christopher Hitchens, and as of this year was awarded in collaboration with the editors of The Atlantic. Previous winners include the Washington Post editor Martin Baron, the filmmaker Alex Gibney, and the former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. Here is the text of Gessen’s remarks:
I am often asked what it’s like to work as a journalist in the United States after working as one in Moscow. I joke that it’s wonderful because I hardly get any death threats and I get to write for an extraordinary magazine, and I get read, and I get recognition. All of which is everything a journalist can dream of: readers, recognition, acceptance. This prize is a case in point—although it is, of course, singular. Being recognized for “commitment to free expression and
