Masha Gessen Wins 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Opinion Writing

Masha Gessen of The New York Times won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in opinion writing on Monday, May 6, 2026, for a collection of essays, most of which critique President Donald Trump. The award was given for work that the Pulitzer committee described in its test of excellence as demonstrating clarity, moral purpose, sound logic, engaging prose and power to influence public opinion.

Gessen has argued in favor of gender-affirming care for minors and excoriated the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v.

Skrmetti. D. medication, receive hormonal treatment for short stature and participate in competitive sports — that can have similar long-term effects.

These are choices that individuals make, usually with their parents and often with their doctors. We all live with the consequences of trade-offs we made as teenagers. Gessen began publicly identifying as nonbinary in 2020.

That same year, the writer posted on social media that even better I’d totally use Gessen as my pronoun all the time and thinks avoiding pronouns is a great solution. S. passport indicates her gender as X. In a Pulitzer-winning essay, Gessen recalled an encounter at the airport in which a border security officer asked, What is your gender?

It’s X, I answered. What does that mean? It means it’s X. Can you elaborate?

No. Is there an issue? The officers conferred for a minute and sent Gessen on the way. Gessen wrote that this is exactly who I am: a person who doesn’t identify as either male or female. Gessen also questioned why border officers needed to know gender at all, noting that the passport photo and age matched.

Gessen emigrated to the United States from Russia with her parents as a child. Gessen returned to Russia as an adult and restored Russian citizenship before coming back to the United States in 2014 to escape the Kremlin’s anti-gay campaign. Gessen arrived in Harlem.

There, Gessen recalled speaking to a white woman who said she had been the target of racist remarks made by people who were not white. And I knew there was no such thing as reverse racism: You cannot be the object of racial discrimination if you are a member of the powerful majority.

The next day, Gessen took her daughter to a playground in Harlem where a drunk Black man called her daughter a white bitch. Her daughter asked, Isn’t this racism? Gessen wrote that somehow, my model, which denied the possibility of racism directed against the majority, could not account for the power dynamics involved in being a child being berated by an adult.

Gessen has tried to clarify preferred pronouns several times. The writer has stated acceptance of they pronouns while expressing a preference for using Gessen as a pronoun or avoiding pronouns altogether. com reported that a glance at Gessen’s career indicates a near-total lack of decent opinions and described the writer’s logic and purpose as deranged.

The outlet noted Gessen’s absolute callousness towards victims of child mutilation in discussions of gender-affirming care. Gessen has written on rising authoritarian regimes.