Michelle Burford

From WNBA icon and Olympic champion Brittney Griner—a raw, revelatory account of her unfathomable detainment in Russia and her journey home

On February 17, 2022, Brittney Griner arrived in Moscow ready to spend the WNBA off-season playing for the Russian women’s basketball team where she had been the centerpiece of previous championship seasons. Instead, a security checkpoint became her gateway to hell when she was arrested for mistakenly carrying less than one gram of medically prescribed cannabis oil. Brittney’s world was violently upended, a crisis that she has never spoken in detail about publicly—until now.

In Coming Home, Brittney finally shares the harrowing full story of her sudden arrest days before Russia invaded Ukraine; her bewilderment and isolation while navigating a foreign legal system during her trial and sentencing; her emotional and physical anguish as the first American woman ever to be detained at the IK-2 prison camp, while the #WeAreBG movement rallied for her release; the chilling prisoner swap, for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout; and her remarkable rise from hostage to global spokesperson on behalf of America’s forgotten. In haunting and vivid detail, Brittney takes readers inside the horrors of a geopolitical nightmare spanning ten months.

• The New York Times Magazine cover story: “On May 7, Griner will publish her memoir Coming Home, written with Michelle Burford, documenting her harrowing ordeal in Russia and her return home. The book is brutal, rendering in excruciating detail the conditions of her imprisonment and the fear and desperation that consumed her daily. Griner has always relied on writing for her sanity, starting in middle school, when she endured bullying for her height and androgynous appearance, and this memoir reveals someone deeply familiar with her interiority—she’s vulnerable and raw but has also had enough therapy to use humor to process tragedy.”

• The New York Times Magazine Book Review: “Coming Home is a visceral, harrowing account of what it’s like to be trapped inside Russia’s infamous criminal justice system, with its merciless judges and vast labor camps … Griner, ably assisted by her co-writer, Michelle Burford, describes the Russian penal system—the filth, the interrogations by prison psychiatrists about her sexuality and her supposed drug addiction, the guards’ casual cruelty—in vivid, conversational language.”

• The Washington Post: “Written with Michelle Burford, founding senior editor of O, The Oprah Magazine, who has also channeled the stories of actress Cicely Tyson, gymnast Simone Biles and singer Alicia Keys into print, Coming Home is bound for the talk-show circuits and probably the bestseller lists. The text resonates with the emotional clarity of Griner’s voice … It is a riveting read.”

• Slate: “Griner wrote Coming Home with Michelle Burford, a frequent collaborator on bestselling memoirs—and Griner chose well. The chapters depicting the courtroom and prison are truly gripping; the ones about her homecoming are genuinely moving. They don’t read like Solzhenitsyn or Koestler, but they wouldn’t be convincing if they did … Coming Home’s value is in Griner’s candor about her rare and harrowing experiences. It reads as a deeply personal, publicly powerful documentation of what happened—what is still happening—to her body and mind.”

• Robin Roberts’s exclusive ABC primetime interview with Brittney Griner (click here for highlights)

Ms. Cicely L. Tyson passed away on January 28, 2021, two days following the publication of her memoir, Just As I Am. The book debuted at #1 and spent ten weeks on the NYT Best Seller List. Rest in peace, Ms. Tyson, as the world celebrates your extraordinary life and legacy.

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Oscar, Tony, and three-time Emmy Award-winning actress Cicely Tyson shares her remarkable story in a memoir The Oprah Magazine calls an “essential, passionate, raw, revelatory account of a woman who refused to allow any obstacle to thwart her quest for excellence—racism, misogyny, poverty, single motherhood—and today stands as one of the greatest actresses of all time.”

• The New York Times Book Review: “It is a fine and bracing thing to finish this roundup with Just As I Am (HarperCollins, 416 pp., $28.99), a memoir completed recently enough to include references to Covid-19 and Breonna Taylor. The stories are those of the esteemed actor, activist and former model Cicely Tyson, who, just two years ago, became the first African-American woman to receive an honorary Academy Award, and who has received multiple Emmy nominations for her ongoing work on “How to Get Away With Murder.” Of course, what with Tyson turning 96 years old this year, no illusions are spoiled in explaining that the firm, warm, proud, reflective voice on the page, in full keeping with the star’s onscreen image, is the creation of Michelle Burford, a gifted “collaborator and story architect,” as she calls herself, whose previous celebrity collaborations include books with Alicia Keys, Toni Braxton and Simone Biles.

I linger on this “with” credit, because I like to think that Tyson herself must admire the enterprise with which Burford has turned her specialized skills into such success. The Harlem-born Tyson was “a deep chestnut brown in a nation that considers the darker sister the less attractive one.” Her parents were immigrants from Nevis in the West Indies; her father’s womanizing resulted in her mother leaving, taking little Cicely, her older brother and younger sister. Tyson’s mother could be harsh, belittling. Pregnant as a senior in high school, young Cicely married the baby’s father, but the marriage was brief; the daughter she sent away (to boarding school, to the care of others) for such long stretches while she hustled to establish her own life appears over and over in these pages, an old mother’s regret for what she felt she could not give her baby girl.

Certain stories serve as narrative anchors: Tyson’s artistic education through the tutelage of the lauded director Lloyd Richards; the revolutionary gesture of cutting her hair short and natural in 1962; and, especially, her long, complicated romantic relationship with the damaged, drug-ravaged, genius jazz musician Miles Davis, a connection of great glamour and great strain. This she reflects on at length, with a clear-eyed attention to painful details that, no matter how great the writing assistance, begins with the integrity of the woman ready to do the telling.

A throng of admirers has been eager to hear whatever she wants to tell. Burford, a sensitive listener, has organized 96 years’ worth of stories with grace. Right about now, the autobiography of Miss Cicely Tyson is a balm for the afflicted.”

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• Click here to read The New York Times profile of Michelle Burford, on the eve of the release of JUST AS I AM (pdf on Linkedin)

• Or click here to read the profile on The New York Times website

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• The Washington Post:  “Just As I Am is a 400-page chronicle of a history as American as apple pie, as Black as the dead of night, as rich, surely, as Tyson’s favorite meals, oxtails and okra, cooked up by her late ex-husband Miles Davis. While undoubtedly personal—or “plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside,” as Tyson writes in the book’s introduction via her skilled collaborator Michelle Burford—it’s a universal accounting of just how far we’ve come in Tyson’s near-century of life, and how far we still must go.

But what shines most from the memoir is how Tyson’s story, while frankly written and supremely eye-opening, isn’t just her own. It’s also the story of Black women in America, of generations past, present and yet to come, whose wills to survive are divinely gifted and ancestrally guided. Perhaps that’s why, in the last pages of the book, she speaks directly to her proverbial sisters and daughters, nieces and grandchildren, revealing what she hopes her legacy will be, whenever God calls her home.

• The Oprah Magazine: “Just As I Am is an essential, passionate, raw, revelatory account of a woman who refused to allow any obstacle to thwart her quest for excellence—racism, misogyny, poverty, single motherhood—and today stands as one of the greatest actresses of all time.”

• Publishers Weekly: “Tyson provides an intimate glimpse into her stormy marriage with jazz maestro Miles Davis, which ended in divorce. ‘I felt no need to drape words on the hanger of inevitability,’ she writes. ‘The marriage had long since been over.’ It’s in these poignant moments that the memoir becomes a resonant meditation on the link between an actress’s life and her art. This show-stopping tale hits the mark.”

• Best Memoirs and Biographies: Amazon Editors’ Pick, March 2021

Clint Harp, the maverick carpenter on Chip and Joanna Gaines’s smash hit Fixer Upper (HGTV) and the star of Wood Work on the DIY Network, shares the inspiring story of his rise from novice craftsman and reluctant cliff jumper to internationally renowned furniture artisan. Spanning Clint’s remarkable life—including a childhood learning carpentry and hard work at his grandfather’s knee, the struggle to balance pursuing his lifelong passion with supporting his family, and the many adventures and misadventures of filming Fixer Upper in Waco, Texas—Handcrafted is part memoir and part manual for dreamers. Clint provides unvarnished, thoughtful reflections on a path that is possible for anyone bold enough to attempt it.

• President Jimmy Carter: “A fellow craftsman from Georgia, Clint shows how to live life as an adventure. From the floor of his first shop to the foundations of Habitat for Humanity houses, to building furniture for the world to see, Clint Harp is living a handcrafted life.”

• Chip Gaines: “I’m proud of Clint. I’m proud of the husband and father he is, and I’m proud that he’s my friend. He’s the kind of guy who just bears down and gets stuff done. I’m glad he took the time to put his life story together, and I’m honored to have played a small part. Don’t be dumb…read this book!”

Four-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles—hailed as one of the greatest athletes of all time after her breathtaking performance at the 2016 Rio Games—shares her inspiring journey from a foster-care home in Ohio to her place in history as the most decorated American gymnast to ever compete.

• Ranked #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list, Young Adult Hardcover Nonfiction

• Indie Best Seller list, Young Adult Hardcover Nonfiction

• Mary Lou Retton, 1984 Olympic champion: “Just when we thought we were at the physical limit of the sport, here comes Simone Biles. She’s the best I’ve ever seen. She’s in a class by herself.”

• Nastia Liukin, five-time Olympic medalist: “Courage to Soar is a truly remarkable story about an amazing athlete and person. I continuously felt inspired through each chapter.”

Amy Purdy, the double-amputee snowboarder and TED speaker who inspired a nation on Dancing with the Stars, reveals the intimate details of her dramatic comeback from the brink of death to her historic victory at the 2014 Paralympic games in Sochi. Amy’s glimpse of the afterlife—coupled with the loss of her legs to bacterial meningitis—compelled her toward a new spiritual path. Read an excerpt.

• The New York Times Best Seller monthly list (Sports)

• Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love: “Amy’s honest and sharply written memoir leaves me feeling as uplifted as I do when I spend time in her presence. She brings the same courage and open-heartedness to these pages that she brings to each day she navigates the world—one carbon-fiber foot at a time.”

• Deepak Chopra: “What a remarkable young woman—and what a gem of a book.”

Toni Braxton has earned six Grammy Awards and sold more than 60 million albums worldwide—yet success hasn’t shielded the singer and reality show star from some of life’s greatest hardships. In this revealing memoir, Toni opens up about her pair of humiliating bankruptcies, her heartrending divorce, her son’s autism—and the painful health condition that once threatened her life. Read an excerpt.

• Ranked #1 Amazon Best Seller in Popular Music Books, May 2014

• Michelle appeared as Toni’s co-author in the hit reality show Braxton Family Values

• Lifetime Original movie Toni Braxton: Unbreak My Heart (2016) is based on the memoir

How do you create a #1-rated talk show for 25 seasons? In this 148-page, full-color bookazine, Oprah gives you a personal backstage tour of one of America’s best-loved programs. She shares stories of the show’s early days (“We’d go downstairs on State Street and beg people to be in our audience in exchange for heat!”) and what led her to shift the show in the ’90s (“I wanted to use this platform as a force for good”). The keepsake includes O’s all-time best memories—the celebrity interviews, aha moments, makeovers and huge surprises. Read an excerpt.