September Publishing scores Brittney Griner’s account of Russian imprisonment

September Publishing has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to Coming Home, basketball player Brittney Griner’s account of her time in a Russian prison.

Hannah MacDonald, publisher at September Publishing, acquired UK & Commonwealth (including serial) rights from Serena Lehman at Knopf, Penguin Random House US. The book will publish on 11th July 2024. 

McDonald said: "We are thrilled to be publishing Coming Home this summer. It is an extraordinary book, a taut, compelling account of a brutal situation. But I was also blown away by the emotional impact of the story, the particular physical and mental challenges Brittney faced – and the resilience and grace under pressure that the woman and the book demonstrate." 

On February 17, 2022, Brittney Griner arrived in Moscow ready to spend the offseason playing for the Russian women’s basketball team where she had been the centerpiece of previous championship seasons. Instead, she was arrested for carrying under one gram of medically prescribed hash oil.

The book’s synopsis reads: "In Coming Home, Brittney finally shares the harrowing details of her sudden arrest days before Russia invaded Ukraine; her bewilderment and isolation while navigating a foreign legal system amid her trial and sentencing; her emotional and physical anguish as the first American woman ever to endure a Russian penal colony while the #WeAreBG movement rallied for her release; the chilling prisoner swap with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout; and her remarkable rise from hostage to global spokesperson on behalf of forgotten prisoners. In haunting and vivid detail, Brittney takes readers inside the horrors of a geopolitical nightmare spanning ten months.

"And yet Coming Home is more than Brittney’s journey from captivity to freedom. In an account as gripping as it is poignant, she shares how her deep love for Cherelle, her college sweetheart and wife of six years, anchored her during their greatest storm; how her family’s support pulled her back from the brink; and how hundreds of letters from friends and neighbours lent her resolve to keep fighting. Coming Home is both a story of survival and a testament to love—the bonds that brought Brittney home to her family, and at last, to herself."