SANTA CRUZ >> Race and policing will be among the topics discussed when author Leila Mottley comes to the Resource Center for Nonviolence for a conversation with community activist Ayo Banjo and to discuss her novel “Nightcrawling” Oct. 19.

Mottley was born and raised in Oakland where she was named as the city’s youth poet laureate in 2018 when she was 16. Around the same time, she began writing what would become her debut novel “Nightcrawling,” the story of a 17-year-old girl named Kiara Johnson who lives with her brother in an East Oakland apartment complex. When her rent increases, and with her father dead and mother in rehab, she gets a job as a sex worker to make ends meet. Her life is further changed as she becomes a key witness in a scandal involving the Oakland Police Department.The book, released in 2022, became a New York Times Best-Seller, an Oprah’s Book Club pick, was longlisted for a Booker Prize and was the recipient of a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award.

In addition to “Nightcrawling,” Mottley published her first poetry book, “woke up no light” in April, wrote a poem titled “Fire Season” that was published in the New York Times in 2020 and is set to release her second novel, “The Girls Who Grew Big,” in 2025.

The conversation will be led by Banjo, the marketing director of the Resource Center for Nonviolence, UC Santa Cruz graduate who’s served as the school’s youngest student body president, former program director of Santa Cruz Black and also led the NAACP’s Youth & College Division throughout California and Hawaii. His work has been featured in KQED, Good Times, CalMatters and other publications.

The event is held in partnership with Santa Cruz Public Libraries and is sponsored by Friends of the Capitola Branch Library, NAACP Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz Black.

The conversation is 2-3:30 p.m. Oct. 19 at the Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St., Santa Cruz. The event is free, but space is limited and registration is encouraged at Santacruzpl.libcal.com/calendar/SCPL/leila.