Leila Mottley

Leila Mottley is the author of Nightcrawling, a bestseller with The New York Times, an Oprah’s Book Club selection, and a Booker Prize nominee. This debut novel welcomes readers into protagonist Kiara Johnson’s world in Oakland, California, where black young adults experience joy, confusion, hope, and fear, as she navigates the wounds of police sexual violence, adultification, and a family fractured by the criminal justice system. Mottley was the Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland in 2018.