Elizabeth de Souza is a writer and educator whose work explores the intersection of culture, psychology and the arts. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University, where she was awarded a Teaching Assistantship in 2008.
Her work has since appeared and won awards in Solstice Literary Magazine (Runner up, Nonfiction Contest, 2014), Cutbank Literary Journal (Finalist, Nonfiction Contest, 2015) and Callaloo. In 2018 she was a Finalist for the Oxford American Jeff Baskin Writers Fellowship, and in 2019 she was a Finalist for a Creative Capital Award.
From 2011-2015, de Souza served as Visiting Scholar at Franklin & Marshall College, where she collaborated with Dr. Micheal L. Penn, Chair of the Psychology Department, in a variety of teaching projects. The most ambitious was the 2014 exhibition Painting with Light: The Art of Bunch Washington, an outgrowth of her course “Sleeping in the Fire: Art, Culture and Mental Health”. For three semesters, students used Bunch Washington’s life as a lens to explore the relationship between these topics. The programming she and her students created for the exhibition included workshops and lectures given by a panel of distinguished musicians, artists and writers, including two Pulitzer Prize-winners, as well as gallery events that blended live music, literature, and art scholarship.
De Souza currently lives in the Pittsburgh area with her husband and two young children. Her first book, "Sleeping in the Fire," is in progress.
Her work has since appeared and won awards in Solstice Literary Magazine (Runner up, Nonfiction Contest, 2014), Cutbank Literary Journal (Finalist, Nonfiction Contest, 2015) and Callaloo. In 2018 she was a Finalist for the Oxford American Jeff Baskin Writers Fellowship, and in 2019 she was a Finalist for a Creative Capital Award.
From 2011-2015, de Souza served as Visiting Scholar at Franklin & Marshall College, where she collaborated with Dr. Micheal L. Penn, Chair of the Psychology Department, in a variety of teaching projects. The most ambitious was the 2014 exhibition Painting with Light: The Art of Bunch Washington, an outgrowth of her course “Sleeping in the Fire: Art, Culture and Mental Health”. For three semesters, students used Bunch Washington’s life as a lens to explore the relationship between these topics. The programming she and her students created for the exhibition included workshops and lectures given by a panel of distinguished musicians, artists and writers, including two Pulitzer Prize-winners, as well as gallery events that blended live music, literature, and art scholarship.
De Souza currently lives in the Pittsburgh area with her husband and two young children. Her first book, "Sleeping in the Fire," is in progress.