Local author Maya Johnson will present an in-store book talk and signing of her debut book “Searching For a Black Writer,” 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 17 at Chaucer’s Books, Loreto Plaza, 3321 State St., Santa Barbara.

Joining Johnson in conversation will be memoirist and UCSB professor Ellen O’Connell Whittet, author of “What You Become in Flight.”

“I think the other writers, always searching for their next story, looked at me – with my brown skin, bright orange hair and hot pink lipstick – and wanted to collect me,” Johnson said.

“I was something peculiar to them. And I was more than happy to let them, if I got something in return,” she said.

In the story: A school like UC Santa Barbara should be a paradise. It’s frat boys skipping class to surf three steps from their dorms. It’s day-long ragers and girls in bikinis on a Monday.

In the party town of Isla Vista, college years are meant to be reckless, inebriated and untouchable, and everyone is trying to be something they’re not.

For Maya, a young black writer running from a life of sexual repression under her family’s religion, adulthood becomes an aimless journey through isolation and elitism in the deceiving glow of the Santa Barbara ocean.

When death complicates all she knows about her family and herself, Maya’s search for self takes her up and down the California coast, tracing her lineage to align her past with her present.

In “Searching For a Black Writer,” Johnson connects ideas of tokenism and black excellence, motherhood and perfectionism, and family and spirituality to find her way home.

Johnson is an Afrofuturist storyteller from California. As a black, queer writer, she defines politics through interpersonal relationships, focusing on topics of generational trauma, romance, and identity.

A graduate of UC Santa Barbara’s Writing and Literature program, she has written for Locavore Lit LA, Laurel Moon, 45th Parallel, BULL, and Beyond Thought.