Willard Motley

Robert E. Fleming (University of New Mexico)

Ed. by Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 14 Jul 1909
Died 4 Mar 1965
Activity 1938-1965

Places

Born in Illinois
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Letter-writer/ Diarist
Novelist
Story-writer

Resources

Motley's Works

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Willard Motley was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 14 July 1909 and grew up in a racially mixed neighbourhood in south Chicago. At the age of thirteen he began to write a children's column for the Chicago

Defender

, an African American newspaper. After graduating from Englewood High School in 1929 Motley began to submit work to popular magazines, but it would be 1938 before he published, primarily in small travel magazines.

In 1940 he began work on a novel, Knock on Any Door (1947). The story of an Italian American boy's transformation from altar boy to armed robber and murderer, Knock on Any Door drew on Motley's life in the Chicago slums during the 1930s, his experience on the Federal Writers' Project, and his visits to penal institutions and Chicago courtrooms. Nick Romano, the son of an

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509 words

Citation: Fleming, Robert E.. "Willard Motley". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 March 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3226, accessed 23 November 2024.]