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)