"Ian is magic. His story is difficult and heartbreaking, but he takes us places we need to go to understand why we must do better."—Bryan Stevenson 

“This is a stunner.”—Publishers Weekly 

"Manuel’s account is both heart-wrenching and uplifting.... Manuel vividly captures the terror of an adolescent thrust into adult incarceration and the added trauma of solitary confinement. He portrays the prison bureaucracy as arbitrary in its amplification of punitive measures, including routine beatings and tear-gassings... A disturbing, vital, necessary eyewitness addition to debates about the mass incarceration epidemic in the U.S."—Kirkus Reviews

“His story is heartbreaking and hopeful and needs to be told.”—Booklist

The US is the only country that sentences 13- and 14-year-old offenders, mostly youth of color, to life in prison without parole, regardless of the scientifically proven singularities of the developing adolescent brain—a heinous wrinkle in the scandal of mass incarceration. In 1991, Ian Manuel, then 14, was sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide crime after a botched mugging with some older boys where he shot and wounded a woman.

Here is Manuel’s powerful testimony of growing up in Central Park Village in Tampa, Florida—a neighborhood riddled with poverty and gang violence—and of his efforts to rise above his circumstances, only to find himself, partly through his own actions, imprisoned for26 years, 18 years of which were spent in solitary confinement.

Here is the at once wrenching and inspiring story of how he endured the savagery of the United States prison system and of how his victim forgave him and bravely advocated for his freedom, which was achieved by a crusade on the part of Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative to address the barbarism of our judicial system and to bring about “just mercy.”

Full of unexpected twists and turns as it describes a struggle to attain redemption, My Time Will Come shows the human will to transcend adversity through determination and art (poetry in Ian's case).

IAN MANUEL lives in New York City. He is a poet and motivational speaker at schools and social organizations nationwide.

IAN MANUEL will be in conversation with DAVID GARLOCK of Straight Ahead.

Purchase your copy of My Time Will Come: A Memoir of Crime, Punishment, Hope, and Redemption (Foreword by Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy) ahead of the event.

This event will be live-streamed by Making Worlds. Registration is encouraged.