One for the history books: Who is Leila Mottley, the youngest-ever writer on the Booker long list?

The Booker long list announced on Tuesday is an interesting curation of authors which is broadly divided not just in nationality but in age as well. This year’s list includes the youngest and the oldest-ever contenders for the prize for fiction. After six decades in print, British writer Alan Garner has made it to the Booker long list for the first time with Treacle Walker. Meanwhile, at the age of 20, Leila Mottley has been long listed for Nightcrawling. The list also includes authors from the US, UK, Ireland, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. As per news agency AFP, Mottley is one of three debut novelists on the list, alongside Britain’s Maddie Mortimer for Maps of our Spectacular Bodies and American writer Selby Wynn Schwartz for After Sappho. It is the entry of Mottley that has book clubs and literary enthusiasts talking about her short but shining career and a book that is forever-relevant. Let’s take a look: Who is Leila Mottley? At the age of 20, Mottley is the youngest ever writer to make it to the Booker long list. Even though she made it to the global platform at this age, she has been quite a star since her childhood. Early on in her life, she was inclined towards literature, largely influenced by her father, a playwright. She first made it big by becoming the Oakland Youth Poet Laureate in 2018 at the age of 16. She stood runner-up the previous two consecutive years. With the steady recognition she received for her published works in magazines and live-performances in slam-poetry sessions, Mottley became a familiar face in California’s literary scene. She started writing Nightcrawling while she was still in high school and finished it at the age of 17. The New York Times reported that she approached her professor, Ruth Ozeki, for advice at Smith College in Massachusetts’s Northampton. Ozeki, who is this year’s Women’s Prize-winning novelist, directed her the New York-based boutique literary agency, Friedrich Agency, who sold the book in a 13-way auction to publisher Knopf during the pandemic, in time for Mottley’s 18th birthday. What is her book about? The book is centred around a sexual-abuse scandal that involved several members of the Oakland police department in the US and a Richmond-based sex worker. The scandal came to light in September 2015, when a police officer died by suicide, leaving behind a note that blew the lid off the scandal. The scandal made headlines as the sex worker had been underage for a period of time during these encounters, The Indian Express reported. The case was finally settled in 2017 when Oakland city paid the woman, aged 19 at the time, $1 million in compensation, however, no admission of liability. While all of this was unfolding and investigation was on in 2016, Mottley, 14, was following the case with great interest. She observed that amid all the media circus, the plight of a young woman seemed to go unnoticed and the entire investigation surrounded the police forces. The case made a lasting impact on Mottley’s young mind as it made the basis for her first novel, Nightcrawling. It tells the story of 17-year-old Kiara Johnson trying to make ends meet and taking care of her brother and an abandoned child next door in an East Oakland apartment complex. While hunting for a job, she ends up as a juvenile sex worker. Her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department. Since its publication in June, the book, Nightcrawing, rapidly made it to bestseller lists. It was picked up by Oprah Winfrey’s book club as the pick for the month. According to The Indian Express, the American talk-show host praised the book’s deep lyricism and rendition of a “soul-searching portrait of survival and hope”. A six-book shortlist will be announced on 6 September, and the winner will be crowned on 17 October at a ceremony in London. With inputs from agencies Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.