On Wednesday the Carnegie Corporation of New York announced it will award up to $200,000 to 32 scholars in the organization’s inaugural class of fellows in the social sciences and humanities. Among them is Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen, who recently released ‘The Brothers,’ a book about Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Gessen, “a lesbian mother who is abandoning her home in Russia because of the anti-gay laws,” her bio reads, is working on a book about Birobidzhan, a Jewish autonomous region 50 miles short of the Chinese border, for Nextbook Press’ Jewish Encounter Series.
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Jonathan Zalman is a writer and teacher based in Brooklyn.