Books & Books and Miami Book Fair present…

Please note this is a free event! However, if you would like to make a contribution to support Books & Books' virtual events, we are grateful for any and all donations. Donations can be made in the upper righthand corner, above the "Save My Spot!" registration button. Thank you!

"David Sanchez's first novel—brilliant, lyrical, hilarious, heartbreaking—is the definitive handbook to hell and back . . . A stunning debut."
—Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban

For fans of Denis Johnson and Ocean Vuong: A captivating, searing, and ultimately redemptive debut novel about coming of age on Florida’s drug-riddled Gulf Coast and the enigmatic connection between memory and self

David has a mind that never stops running. He reads Dante and Moby Dick, he sinks into Hemingway and battles with Milton. But on Florida’s Gulf Coast, one can slip into deep water unconsciously; at the age of fourteen, David runs away from home to pursue a girl and, on his journey, tries crack cocaine for the first time. He’s hooked instantly. Over the course of the next decade, he fights his way out of jail and rehab, trying to make sense of the world around him—a sunken world where faith in anything is a privilege. He makes his way to a tenuous sobriety, but it isn't until he takes a literature class at a community college that something within him ignites.

All Day is a Long Time is a spectacular, raw account of growing up and managing, against every expectation, to carve out a place for hope. We see what it means, and what it takes, to come back from a place of little control—to map ourselves on the world around, and beyond, us. David Sanchez’s debut resounds with real force and demonstrates the redemptive power of the written word.

DAVID SANCHEZ is the recipient of a James A. Michener Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of Miami, a PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship, and a Tin House Scholarship in 2018. ALL DAY IS A LONG TIME is his first novel.

About the Moderator:
CHANTEL ACEVEDO:Called "a master storyteller" by Kirkus Reviews, Chantel Acevedo is the author of the novels  Love and Ghost Letters,  A Falling Star, The Distant Marvels, which was a finalist for the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and , The Living Infinite, hailed by Booklist as a "vivid and enthralling tale of love and redemption." Acevedo's middle grade duology. Muse Squad, (called "Riveting and suspenseful" by School Library Journal) was published by Balzer + Bray. She is Professor of English at the University of Miami, where she directs the MFA program.

All Day Is a Long Time: A Virtual Evening with David Sanchez and Chantel Acevedo