Gabriella Souza's work has appeared or is upcoming in the Best Small Fictions 2022 anthology, North American Review, USA Today, PS (formerly Popsugar), The Rumpus, Cleaver, and Litro, among others. She received fellowships and scholarships from The Community of Writers, Disquiet International Literary Program, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and she won the 2020 San Miguel Writers’ Conference Writing Contest. She lives in Baltimore with her husband and their dog and two cats, and when she's not writing, she enjoys Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and improv dance.
I don’t ever do anything from a place of fear—which is an odd place for me to be in because I have anxiety—but I have to [step into places of discomfort] because that’s where growth happens. If you’re comfortable, you’re not growing.
Poetry allows me to say the thing without a million conjectures. It leaves a lot of space and allows words to resonate and connect without me having to take you there . . . because of the conventions of poetry, I can say things that are understood as a gate to the truth.