Brooklyn based writer Judy Chicurel looks set to hit the top of the bestseller charts later this year as her debut novel If I Knew You Were Going To Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go is set for release in October 2014.

Chicurel, who grew up on Long Beach, is a seasoned writer, having been published in The New York Times, Granta magazine and Newsday, and her plays performed at the New York International Fringe Festival and Sage Theater. Her debut novel, set in 1972, has been acquired by Headline and is about life in a Long Island close-knit working class community hit hard by the Vietnam War. Her warm, atmospheric writing has been compared to literary greats such as Jennifer Egan and Anne Tyler.