Author: Marie-Solange Benedict
Born: November 2, 1951
Bio: Author Marie-Solange Benedict was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  When she was ten years old her family, like thousands of others, fled from the Duvalierist dictatorship to live in Africa.  After attending boarding schools in England, Marie-Solange moved to the United States where she graduated from The Methodist Hospital School of Nursing in New York.  She also holds a B.A. in Political Science from Queens College, City University of New York, and a J.D. from John Marshall Law School, Atlanta, Georgia. Even during a thirty-eight year career in health care and teaching, Marie-Solange has always maintained her passion for writing.
Her first book Child Of A Mountainous Land:  odyssey of a Haitian refugee is an account of her childhood experiences under the Duvalier dictatorship shortly before leaving her native Haiti in 1962 and residing in Africa, Europe, and the United States.  The book chronicles the uprooting of an ordinary Haitian family from its ancestral home.  It follows the struggles of the initial group of refugees who survive the events that have conspired to dismantle a country and continue to push even more of its people into exile.
Marie-Solange writes and works in South Florida where she lives with her family.