An Evening with Elena Kostyuchenko

Kostyuchenko began writing for Moscow’s Novaya Gazeta in 2006, the year her fellow reporter Anna Politkovskaya was assassinated after publishing criticisms of Vladimir Putin. For more than a decade, Kostyuchenko covered politics and protest movements in Russia. In 2011, she called the world’s attention to feminist punk band Pussy Riot and became the first Russian journalist to publicly identify as LGBTQ. As a war correspondent, she reported from the front lines of the invasion of Ukraine until Russian authorities revoked Novaya Gazeta’s license to publish. In 2023, Kostyuchenko survived an apparent poisoning attempt in Germany, prompting PEN America to call on democratic countries to support journalists who challenge authoritarianism. Kostyuchenko joined undergraduates and faculty from the University of Chicago Creative Writing Department to discuss her investigative journalism, her coverage of the rise of fascism in Russia, her life in political exile, and her new memoir, I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country  (Penguin, 2023).