About this Event
Each VIP ticket ($35 + fees) includes:
- A pre-signed copy of This Cursed Beautiful Land
- VIP seating at the event
- A donation to the Cuyahoga County Public Library Foundation
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About the author:
Evan Gershkovich is a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal based in Berlin. Born in New Jersey to Soviet émigrés, he lived in Russia for over five years before his 2023 arrest and subsequent sixteen-month imprisonment on false espionage charges. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Economist and Foreign Policy, and he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2025 as part of an investigative team for The Journal. He is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship.
In This Cursed Beautiful Land, in March 2023, a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Evan Gershkovich met with a union boss connected with a Russian tank factory. As the journalist sat with his source in an empty restaurant in an industrial city 900 miles east of Moscow, a squad of masked agents charged in, blindfolded Evan, and dragged him into an unmarked van. The agents were from the FSB, Putin’s powerful security service, and the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.
Five years earlier, Evan had arrived in Moscow to jumpstart his journalism career. His parents had left the Soviet Union in the 1970s, forging a middle-class life in New Jersey, where Evan grew up on Soviet-era cartoons and weekend trips to Brighton Beach. In Moscow, Evan dove into life—unpacking politics for readers of The Moscow Times and developing a circle of deep friendships with Russian peers, all striving to make their way in perilous times.
Western journalists had long felt insulated from the dangers their Russian counterparts experienced. But war, it seemed, had changed the rules. Interrogated for hours after his arrest, Evan was told he was being charged with spying and thrown in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo Pr*son—a pawn in a geopolitical chess match.
After his world suddenly shrunk to a tiny, cement-walled cell, Evan did something remarkable: he continued reporting. For the next sixteen months, he documented a life in Russia that few Westerners will ever experience: its sprawling Pr*son system, with its own vocabulary and customs—and surprising pockets of humanity.
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FAQs
For questions about accessibility or to request accommodations for individuals with hearing, visual or mobility impairments, please email [email protected].
Additional books will be available for purchase courtesy of Mac's Backs - Books on Coventry.
All ticket purchases are non-refundable. If you have purchased a ticket and can no longer attend, email [email protected] by the event date to arrange book pickup at the CCPL branch of your choice.
Questions? Email us at .
Event venue & nearby stays
Beachwood Branch of Cuyahoga County Public Library, 25501 Shaker Boulevard, Beachwood, United States
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