Brittney Griner engaged on memoir about Russian captivity

NEW YORK — Saying she is able to share the “unfathomable” expertise of being arrested and incarcerated in Russia, basketball star Brittney Griner is engaged on a memoir that’s scheduled for spring 2024.

Griner was arrested final 12 months on the airport in Moscow on drug-related expenses and detained for practically 10 months, a lot of that point in jail. Her plight unfolded on the identical time Russia invaded Ukraine and additional heightened tensions between Russia and the U.S., ending solely after she was freed in alternate for the infamous Russian arms supplier Viktor Bout.

A WNBA All-Star with the Phoenix Mercury, Griner had flown to Moscow in February 2022 to rejoin UMMC Ekaterinburg, a Russian ladies’s workforce she has performed for within the low season since 2014.

“That day (in February) was the beginning of an unfathomable period in my life which only now am I ready to share,” Griner stated in a press release launched Tuesday by Alfred A. Knopf.

“The primary reason I traveled back to Russia for work that day was because I wanted to make my wife, family, and teammates proud. After an incredibly challenging 10 months in detainment, I am grateful to have been rescued and to be home. Readers will hear my story and understand why I’m so thankful for the outpouring of support from people across the world.”

Griner added that she additionally hoped her e book would elevate consciousness of different Americans detained abroad, together with Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested in Russia final month and accused of espionage; businessman Kai Li, serving a 10-year sentence in China on expenses of showing state secrets and techniques to the FBI; and Paul Whelan, a company safety govt imprisoned in Russia on spying expenses. Around the time Griner was launched, Whelan criticized the U.S. authorities for not doing sufficient to assist him.

Russia has been a preferred taking part in vacation spot for high WNBA athletes within the offseason, with some incomes salaries over $1 million – practically quadruple what they will make as a base WNBA wage. Despite pleading responsible to possessing canisters with hashish oil, a results of what she stated was hasty packing, Griner nonetheless confronted trial below Russian regulation.

Griner’s memoir is at present untitled and can finally be revealed in a younger grownup version. Financial phrases weren’t disclosed.

In Tuesday’s press assertion, Knopf stated that the e book could be “intimate and moving” and that Griner would disclose “in vivid detail her harrowing experience of her wrongful detainment (as classified by the State Department) and the difficulty of navigating the byzantine Russian legal system in a language she did not speak.”

“Griner also describes her stark and surreal time living in a foreign prison and the terrifying aspects of day-to-day life in a women’s penal colony,” the announcement reads. “At the heart of the book, Griner highlights the personal turmoil she experienced during the near ten-month ordeal and the resilience that carried her through to the day of her return to the United States last December.”

Griner, 32, is a 6-foot-9 two-time Olympic gold medalist, three-time All-American at Baylor University, a outstanding advocate for pay fairness for ladies athletes and the primary brazenly homosexual athlete to achieve an endorsement cope with Nike. She is the creator of 1 earlier e book, “In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court,” revealed in 2014.