The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley Book Event

We are very excited to welcome Leila Mottley for an in-person event celebrating her newest release, The Girls Who Grew Big. For this event, Leila will be joined in conversation by Kara Jackson.

Please note: This event is free to attend, but registration is required. Masks are required for our in-person events.

From the author of Oprah's Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller Nightcrawling, here is an astonishing new novel about the joys and entanglements of a fierce group of teenage mothers in a small town on the Florida panhandle.

Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, who weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck.

The town thinks the Girls have lost their way, but really they are finding it: looking for love, making and breaking friendships, and navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood.

Full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of these friends’ secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big confirms Leila Mottley’s promise and offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman.

LEILA MOTTLEY is the author of the novel Nightcrawling, an Oprah’s Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller, and the poetry collection woke up no light. She is also the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. She was born and raised in Oakland, where she continues to live.

KARA JACKSON is a writer, musician and performer based in Chicago, Illinois. A daughter of country folks, her work draws a map from the Deep South to the midwest, where she was raised. Through her work she tries to embody the stories of the women in her family, engaging how the experience of the women who came before her inform her reality in the present. Her work has appeared in POETRY, Frontier Poetry, Rookie Mag, Nimrod Literary Journal, The Lily, and Saint Heron. She released her debut album “Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?” In 2023.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. We have dimmable, non-fluorescent lights. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com.