About

Professional Background

Lúcia Cavalcanti de Albuquerque has had a successful career as an academic in the area of Psychology (Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil; Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, UK). Inspired by the tragic death by femicide of her sister Vera, Lucia’s trajectory involved research and community work in the prevention of family violence. She has published extensively under the name Lucia C.A. Williams, and her work has earned many awards, such as from PAHO (the World Health Organization branch for the Americas), in 2009: “Best Practices in Gender, Ethnicity and Health.” She founded, in 2001, the first shelter for abused women in Brazil in a non-capital city (Sao Carlos). 

When possible she combined her love for literature with her field of expertise in academia. Thus, she published an essay, in a case study format, on Virginia Woolf’s child sexual victimization and another on Nabokov’s visionary ideas about the harmful consequences of child sexual abuse. In addition, she published the children’s picture book A Terra dos Bons Pensamentos, in Brazil, which was written originally in English (The Land of Happy Thoughts), inspired by her work as a psychologist at the Toronto Board of Education in the 90s.

Literary Life

Since retirement, she has moved to Ottawa, Canada (2019). She had her debut on the Canadian literary scene with her story, “The Both of Us,” in the 2022 Ottawa Independent Writers (OIW) anthology Ottawa Rising.

A second story entitled “Elisa and the Ex-Voto,” was published in OIW’s 2023 anthology Connections.

In 2023 she joined the Board of the Ottawa Independent Writers (https://www.ottawaindependentwriters.com).

She has completed her memoir, Glimmers at Dusk: A Family Overcomes Darkness with Hope and is presently working on the book Guida’s Hands about the Brazilian sculptor Margarida Lopes de Almeida who sculpted the hands of Christ the Redeemer’s statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.