Spiegel & Grau will publish a memoir by Reality Winner, the Air Force veteran who, in a high-profile 2018 case, was convicted of violating the Espionage Act, the press announced in a news release.
Winner, who served in the Air Force from 2010 to 2016, worked at Pluribus International Corporation in 2017, and while employed there, leaked a classified document about Russian election interference to the Intercept, the nonprofit news website.
She was arrested in June 2017 and convicted in August 2018, receiving a sentence of five years and three months in prison—the longest sentence ever given for leaking government information to the press. In 2021, she was released early and transferred to a transitional facility in San Antonio.
“In this memoir, Winner will tell her story for the first time—the reasons behind her decision, her arrest by the FBI and subsequent prison sentence, her time in prison, and after,” Spiegel & Grau said.
Winner’s case captivated the nation. Her story formed the basis for Is This a Room, Tina Satter’s 2021 play drawn from transcripts of Winner’s FBI interrogation. That play was adapted for Reality, a film directed by Satter and starring Sydney Sweeney as Winner, which was released on HBO last month .
Cindy Spiegel, Spiegel & Grau’s publisher, said in a statement, “Few people have the courage to face the consequences of doing the right thing. It is an honor to publish Reality’s important account of her difficult decision, born of patriotism and heroism, to leak documents that showed evidence of Russian cyberattacks on election officials.”
Winner’s book, currently untitled, is slated for publication in December 2024.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
