Acclaimed Author Leila Mottley to Headline Pasadena Literary Festival

Leila Mottley, whose debut novel “Nightcrawling” became an Oprah’s Book Club selection and New York Times bestseller, will appear at the Pasadena Convention Center on March 14, 2026.

The event is part of the Pasadena Festival of Women Authors.

Mottley will discuss her second novel, “The Girls Who Grew Big,” which has been longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Amazon named it one of the best books of 2025.

The novel opens with Simone, a pregnant 16-year-old, giving birth to twins in a pickup truck. She is 36 weeks along.

Through Simone and her friends Adela and Emory, the story follows teenage mothers in Padua Beach on the Florida Panhandle. The young women, exiled from their homes or facing hardship, build community together.

The New York Times Book Review praised the work as “blistering, wise, empathetic.”

The review noted Mottley has brought “the physicality and pain and beauty of birth and new motherhood into the light.”

It called the novel “vital to behold” for centering teenage girls who have been shamed and shunned and “told to hide themselves away.”

Mottley, who was born and raised in Oakland, served as Oakland Youth Poet Laureate in 2018. She also authored the poetry collection “woke up no light.”

She continues to live in Oakland with her wife.

Tickets are available through the Pasadena Literary Alliance website, https://pasadenaliteraryalliance.org/pasadena-festival-of-women-authors/.