Author Talk & Book Signing  Friday, April 11, 3-4:30 pm

Author Talk & Book Signing Friday, April 11, 3-4:30 pm

Hopkins Graduate and Author Ebonye Octavia Gussine will discuss her debut novel, Somewhat Close to Normal: A Native New Yorker Examines September 11th’s Impact on the Lives of Minorities.

About the Book:
Somewhat Close to Normal is set in a post 9/11 New York City where a group of friends and the people they encounter struggle to face a world irrevocably changed by the terrorist attacks on the United States of America. Spanning a cultural and ethnic mosaic, the characters learn to love, live and stay strong in a world unlike the one they have ever known.

Hope and determination are at the center of this novel. The rules of their world have changed, but the cast of characters learn not only how to live with these new changes, but how their efforts can help define the way society sees them, and the way they see themselves.

About the Author:
Ebonye Octavia Gussine is a Jamaican-American who was born and raised in Queens, New York. She earned a B.A. from John Hopkins University and a M.S. from CUNY School of Professional Studies. Two years after she witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers, she began writing about the impact of that experience. These drafts evolved into her debut novel, Somewhat Close to Normal. She has one child and lives with her husband in Northern California.