Brittney Griner to detail ‘unfathomable’ Russian arrest and detention in new memoir

Brittney Griner is ready to open up about her detention in Russia, more than a year after she was arrested in February 2022.

“That day was the beginning of an unfathomable period in my life which only now am I ready to share,” the WNBA All-Star said in an Instagram post Tuesday.

Griner will detail the “incredibly challenging 10 months of detainment” in Russia in an upcoming memoir, she announced Tuesday. Last year, Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport where authorities searched her luggage and found two vaping cartridges with traces of cannabis oil.

“Readers will hear my story and understand why I’m so thankful for the outpouring of support from people across the world,” she continued.

While Griner’s arrest is at the center of the upcoming book, she said the book is also for other Americans who are imprisoned overseas, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, businessman Emad Shargi and corporate security executive Paul Whelan.

She also listed Airan Berry, Shahab Dalili, Luke Denman, Eyvin Hernandez, Majd Kamalmaz, Jerrel Kenemore, Kai Li, Siamak Namazi, Austin Tice, Mark Swidan and Morad Tahbaz.

Knopf said in a statement Tuesday that Griner “discloses in vivid detail her harrowing experience of her wrongful detainment (as classified by the State Department),” navigating the Russian legal system with a language barrier and her day-to-day life “in a women’s penal colony.”

Griner’s announcement comes four months after she returned to the United States in December as part of a prisoner swap with Russia. Her currently untitled memoir will be released next spring.

A year after her 2022 arrest, Griner resumed her WNBA career by re-signing with the Phoenix Mercury in February.

“We missed BG every day that she was gone and, while basketball was not our primary concern, her presence on the floor, in our locker room, around our organization, and within our community was greatly missed,“ Mercury general manager Jim Pitman said in a statement.