Spencer, Elizabeth

Spencer, Elizabeth (m. Rushers) (1921–  ) writer; born in Carrollton, Miss. She studied at Belhaven College (B.A. 1942) and Vanderbilt (M.A. 1943). She lived in Italy (1953–58), married in 1956, and became a writer of novels and short stories. She taught writing at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada (1976–86) and at the University of North Carolina (1986). Her early novels are based in the rural South, and several others are set in Italy, as in The Light in the Piazza (1960), but whatever the setting, her works tend to deal with expatriates and outsiders.