By Hillel Italie | Related Press
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 yr on the airport in Moscow on drug-related expenses and detained for almost 10 months, a lot of that point in jail. Her plight unfolded on the similar time Russia invaded Ukraine and additional heightened tensions between Russia and the U.S., ending solely after she was freed in trade for the infamous Russian arms seller 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 staff she has performed for within the low season since 2014.
“That day (in February) was the start of an unfathomable interval in my life which solely now am I able to share,” Griner stated in a press release launched Tuesday by Alfred A. Knopf.
“The first purpose I traveled again to Russia for work that day was as a result of I wished to make my spouse, household, and teammates proud. After an extremely difficult 10 months in detainment, I'm grateful to have been rescued and to be house. Readers will hear my story and perceive why I’m so grateful for the outpouring of help from folks internationally.”
Griner added that she additionally hoped her e book would elevate consciousness of different Individuals detained abroad, together with Wall Avenue 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. Across the time Griner was launched, Whelan criticized the U.S. authorities for not doing sufficient to assist him.
Russia has been a well-liked taking part in vacation spot for prime WNBA athletes within the offseason, with some incomes salaries over $1 million — almost quadruple what they will make as a base WNBA wage. Regardless of 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 the moment untitled and can ultimately be printed in a younger grownup version. Monetary phrases weren't disclosed.
In Tuesday’s press assertion, Knopf stated that the e book can be “intimate and transferring” and that Griner would disclose “in vivid element her harrowing expertise of her wrongful detainment (as labeled by the State Division) and the problem of navigating the byzantine Russian authorized system in a language she didn't communicate.”
“Griner additionally describes her stark and surreal time residing in a international jail and the terrifying facets of day-to-day life in a ladies’s penal colony,” the announcement reads. “On the coronary heart of the e book, Griner highlights the non-public turmoil she skilled through the close to ten-month ordeal and the resilience that carried her by means of to the day of her return to the US final December.”
Griner, 32, is a 6-foot-9 two-time Olympic gold medalist, three-time All-American at Baylor College, a distinguished advocate for pay fairness for ladies athletes and the primary overtly homosexual athlete to achieve an endorsement take care of Nike. She is the writer of 1 earlier e book, “In My Pores and skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Courtroom,” printed in 2014.
In February, she re-signed with the Mercury and can play in its upcoming season, which runs from Could by means of September.