Daniel Genis (born August 2, 1978) is a Russian-American journalist, writer, and media person.
Early life and career
Daniel Genis was born in New York City to Alexander and Irina Genis, only a few months after their emigration from the Soviet Union, in 1977. He grew up in Washington Heights, Manhattan, NY.
His father, Alexander Genis is a Russian writer, broadcaster, and cultural critic. During the 1980s and 1990s, Genis's parents' apartment doubled as a clubhouse for Russian writers and artists. Genis was exposed to literature and the arts from a young age, mixing with artists and intellectuals, including Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, Umberto Eco, Norman Mailer, Joseph Brodsky, and Czech film director Miloš Forman.
Daniel's father and his collaborators edited Семь дней (Seven Days) (a weekly literary supplement to Новое Русское Слово) in the living room of his childhood home for a short time. They later achieved almost star status as the chief literary critics of the weekly newspaper Новый Американец. Alexander Genis, Pyotr Vail, Sergei Dovlatov and Vagrich Bakhchanyan collaborated on a weekly emigre magazine which was later considered a hallmark of the early 80s because of its early publications of Eduard Limonov, Vladimir Sorokin, Victor Pelevin and Andrei Sinyavsky.
Genis graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1996, along with other prominent classmates such as Harry Siegel, Jessica Valenti, and Kelly Karbacz. He continued his education at New York University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in History and French in 1999. Genis also spent one year studying at the University of Copenhagen in 1999. Genis developed an interest during this time in antiquarian bookshops and specifically, eighteenth and nineteenth century editions of Greek and Roman classic literature.
While in college, Genis initially worked as an intern and then as an editorial assistant at the publishing house Applause Books, from 1997 to 1998. His tasks entailed setting manuscripts into digital versions and, after two years, Genis ended with an editing credit on The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film. Moreover, Genis worked in the production team for the publication of American theatre and film book editor John A. Willis's Theatre World in 1997.
After graduating from NYU, Genis worked for Nancy Love as an agent-associate. This literary agency was on the Upper East Side; Genis's role entailed finding new authors to represent, although his literary interests did not match his employer's taste for self-help books. Genis and Nancy Love parted ways in 2001.
Arrest and incarceration
In 2001, Genis traded in his publishing career for a life of crime to feed a raging heroin appetite. His taste for the illegal substance (costing Genis $100 per day) led him to embark on a string of robberies in order to pay his debts. The month-long robbery spree centered around the Lower East Side, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Gramercy Park, and the Financial District. Nicknamed the "apologetic bandit" by the press, Genis offered apologies to his victims as he took their cash and returned their wallets. His 18 robberies accounted for $700 in total.
During one week in 2003, Genis committed five robberies. In November of the same year, he was identified by one of his victims, arrested, and eventually convicted of five counts of armed robbery, for which he served 10 years in prison.
While serving his sentence, Genis spent four years in close proximity to American mass murderer Ronald DeFeo. Genis had not only shared with DeFeo the horror of substance addiction, but both hailed from Amityville as well. Since his release, Genis wrote an article for Vice Magazine, commenting on their interactions "inside". Genis currently has a bi-weekly column at Vice, titled "In the Margins".
Genis has also collaborated with fellow drug addict and convict Michael Alig. In a 2014 interview with Genis, after being released on parole, Alig said that his time spent reading while in solitary inspired him to write his memoirs, which he titled Aligula, and he particularly identified with the character Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.