It’s not every day that a 17-year-old writes a novel. Especially one that’s set to be one of the biggest literary debuts of the year, and has already been sold into eight languages. But not everyone is Leila Mottley, the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate who’s also had work published in the New York Times. The now-19-year-old’s novel Nightcrawling (Bloomsbury) is a blistering exploration of power told through the eyes of 17-year-old sex worker Kiara, and is based on a true 2015 story of corruption and sexual abuse within California’s Oakland police department. With her father dead, her mother in jail and her older brother off in pursuit of an unlikely dream as a rapper, Kiara is as alone as it’s possible for a teenage girl to be, living in an apartment block where the rent is about to double. She must head onto the streets of Oakland to survive, but she’s soon picked up by a group of police officers who, rather than offer her protection, choose to exploit her for months on end.
“This book moved me, angered me and – at regular intervals – made me intensely jealous,” says Stylist’s features editor Meena Alexander. “The fact that Mottley wrote this at 17 – an incredibly wise and nuanced novel which unpacks the many ways that young Black women are forced to grow up too fast – is proof of her envy-inducing talent. But mostly it made me excited to find out what the rest of her career will hold. I think we’re witnessing the making of a literary star, and this debut deserves every rave it gets.” £16.98; Bookshop.org