Eunice de Souza (born 1940) is a contemporary Indian English language poet, literary critic and novelist. Some of her famous works, include Fix, Women in Dutch Painting, Ways of Belonging.   Eunice de Souza was born and grew up in Pune, in a Goan Catholic family. She ...

Eunice de Souza (born 1940) is a contemporary Indian English language poet, literary critic and novelist. Some of her famous works, include Fix, Women in Dutch Painting, Ways of Belonging.
 

Eunice de Souza was born and grew up in Pune, in a Goan Catholic family. She studied English literature with an MA from the Marquette University in Wisconsin, USA and earned a PhD from the University of Mumbai. She taught English at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, and was Head of the Department until her recent retirement.

She has also been involved in theatre, both as an actress and director. She began writing novels with Dangerlok in 2001. She has also written four children's books. Apart from poetry and fiction, de Souza has edited numerous anthologies and collections and writes a weekly column for the tabloid Mumbai Mirror. She currently lives in Mumbai.

A typical de Souza poem is an intensely concentrated, highly charged piece. The acidic nature and caustic remarks made in the poem remains even after you have turned the pages. Especially her first book, Fix, was full of irony. The poems tone down a little in the later books. De Souza believes her poems have grown “calmer, more nuanced, less one-dimensional. I feel I’ve become a better poet over the years.”