Brittney Griner’s Memoir to Be Published

Brittney Griner’s memoir is slated for a spring 2024 release. In it, the basketball star will detail her experiences being arrested and imprisoned in Russia.

In February 2022, the WNBA All-Star flew to Moscow to play for the Russian women’s team UMMC Ekaterinburg, a common offseason activity for WNBA athletes that sometimes earns them almost four times as much as they are usually paid. Around the same time Russia invaded Ukraine, Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport for having canisters that contained cannabis oil.

In her memoir, Griner plans to detail her surreal and harrowing experience being detained for over nine months in a Russian prison. In a press statement released Tuesday, Alfred A. Knopf, which will be publishing the memoir, said “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 has advocated for equal pay for women athletes and was the first out gay athlete to be endorsed by Nike, and with her memoir, she hopes to raise awareness for other American detainees, such as Evan Gershkovich, Kai Li, and Paul Whelan.

The memoir is untitled at the moment, but there are already plans to publish a young adult version.

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