“Readers will hear my story and understand why I’m so thankful for the outpouring of support from people across the world,” the WNBA megastar mentioned in a commentary.
NEW YORK — Saying she is in a position to share the “unfathomable” revel in of being arrested and incarcerated in Russia, basketball megastar Brittney Griner is operating on a memoir this is scheduled for spring 2024.
The Houston local used to be arrested last year on the airport in Moscow on drug-related fees and detained for almost 10 months, a lot of that point in jail.
Editor’s be aware: The above video at the start aired on Dec. 8, 2022 when Griner used to be launched.
“Readers will hear my story and understand why I’m so thankful for the outpouring of support from people across the world,” Griner mentioned in a commentary launched Tuesday by way of writer Alfred A. Knopf.
Her plight spread out on the similar time Russia invaded Ukraine and extra heightened tensions between Russia and the U.S., finishing handiest after she used to be freed in exchange for the infamous Russian arms dealer 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 in the low season since 2014.
“That day (in February) used to be the start of an unfathomable duration in my existence which handiest now am I in a position to share,” Griner mentioned.
“The number one reason why I traveled again to Russia for paintings that day used to be as a result of I sought after to make my spouse, circle of relatives, and teammates proud. After a surprisingly difficult 10 months in detainment, I’m thankful to were rescued and to be house.”
Griner added that she additionally was hoping her book would lift consciousness of different Americans detained out of the country, together with Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested in Russia ultimate month and accused of espionage; businessman Kai Li, serving a 10-year sentence in China on fees of revealing state secrets and techniques to the FBI; and Paul Whelan, a company safety govt imprisoned in Russia on spying fees. Around the time Griner used to be launched, Whelan criticized the U.S. govt for now not doing sufficient to assist him.
Russia has been a popular playing destination for best WNBA athletes in the offseason, with some incomes salaries over $1 million — just about quadruple what they are able to make as a base WNBA wage. Despite pleading accountable to possessing canisters with hashish oil, a end result of what she mentioned used to be hasty packing, Griner nonetheless confronted trial below Russian regulation.
Griner’s memoir is recently untitled and can in the end be printed in a tender grownup version. Financial phrases weren’t disclosed.
In Tuesday’s press commentary, Knopf mentioned that the book can be “intimate and moving” and that Griner would expose “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 center of the book, Griner highlights the private turmoil she skilled all over the close to ten-month ordeal and the resilience that carried her via to the day of her go back to the United States ultimate December.”
Griner, 32, is a 6-foot-9 two-time Olympic gold medalist, three-time All-American at Baylor University, a outstanding recommend for pay fairness for girls athletes and the primary overtly homosexual athlete to achieve an endorsement care for Nike. She is the writer of one earlier book, “In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court,” printed in 2014.
In February, she re-signed with the Mercury and can play in its upcoming season, which runs from May via September.
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