Evan Gershkovich, U.S. Journalist Imprisoned in Russia, Will Publish a Memoir

The memoir, which will cover his time in prison and Russia’s move toward autocracy, will be published by Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was imprisoned in Russia for more than a year, is writing a memoir about his time in prison, his five years living in Moscow and Russia’s slide toward autocracy.

The memoir will be published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House, with a tentative publication date in 2026.

Paul Whitlatch, an editorial director for Crown, called the book “a testament to human resilience and a work of first-person reportage with few precedents in modern times.”

His statement continued, “During those sixteen months in Russian prisons, he never stopped being a reporter, even as he faced a reality few of us can imagine.”

Mr. Gershkovich, 32, was detained in March 2023 while on a reporting trip, becoming the first American journalist arrested in Russia on a spying charge since the end of the Cold War. His detention marked an escalation in President Vladimir V. Putin’s crackdown on independent media in Russia.

The Russian authorities accused Mr. Gershkovich, who had reported on Russia for The Journal since 2022, of being a spy for the U.S. government. The charges were vehemently denied by the White House, Mr. Gershkovich and The Journal, which said he was an accredited journalist doing his job. The U.S. government designated him as “wrongfully detained.”

Mr. Gershkovich was held in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Prison, where he spent 23 hours a day inside a small cell and communicated with his family and friends through letters.

After a closed-door trial on the fabricated espionage charges, Mr. Gershkovich was sentenced in July to 16 years in a high-security penal colony.

He was freed on Aug. 1 as part of a sweeping prisoner swap that involved seven countries and led to the release of 15 people imprisoned in Russia.

Mr. Gershkovich is the son of Soviet émigrés, Mikhail Gershkovich and Ella Milman, who both left the country in 1979 for the United States. They raised their children in New Jersey, speaking Russian at home and instilling in them an appreciation for their Russian heritage.

Mr. Gershkovich, who previously worked for The New York Times as a news assistant, moved to Russia in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times, later joining The Wall Street Journal as a foreign correspondent.

In addition to Crown, the memoir has been sold to the publishing house William Collins in Britain, and to Meulenhoff, a publisher in the Netherlands, according to Mr. Gershkovich’s agent, Adam Eaglin.

“Evan is an extraordinary journalist and writer,” Mr. Eaglin said. “He will offer a powerful new perspective on Russia and its relationship to the West in the 21st century.”

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