Our Instructors
Elisabeth Sharp-McKetta
Fiction & Poetry
Elisabeth McKetta teaches writing for Harvard Extension School and Summer School since 2012 and was awarded the James E. Conway Excellence in Teaching Writing Award in 2018. She also teaches poetry for the Oxford Diploma in Creative Writing. She is the author of ten books including a biography, a writing guide, five books of poetry, a children’s book, an anthology of women’s resilience stories, and the novel She Never Told Me About the Ocean. Her poetry and prose have won awards and been published widely.
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McKetta holds degrees from Harvard (BA, English), Georgetown (MA, English), and University of Texas (PhD, English). Much of her work focuses on the intersections between fairy tales and life writing. She lived three years in a tiny house with her young family, an adventure she discusses in her 2019 TEDx talk, “Edit Your Life Like a Poem.”
Elizabeth H. Filippouli
Non-fiction & Connecting with Memory
Elizabeth H. Filippouli is a journalist, writer, and social entrepreneur. Her early career in print and broadcast journalism in Greece and at CNN and Al Jazeera English, was prelude to over a decade of serial entrepreneurship that includes founding Global Thinkers Forum (GTF) an independent international organisation incubated at the University of Oxford.
She joined CNN International as World Report contributor in 2000 and Al Jazeera English as presenter and documentary producer in 2005. Over her career she interviewed leading figures such as: Ted Turner, James Rubin, Deepak Chopra, Mohamed El Baradei, Santiago Calatrava, Enrique Oltuski, Alberto Juantorena, Chris Cramer, Al Gore, Susan Sarandon, Lord Robertson, Christiane Amanpour, Peter Arnett, King Constantine of Greece, Lord Sebastian Coe.
Her nonfiction book ‘From Women to the World-Letters for a New Century’ was published by IB Tauris in July 2021 through personal narratives and real-life stories, raising awareness around pressing global issues such as gender equality, homelessness, war, LGBTQ activism, mental health, COVID-19, the refugee crisis. The book received praise in the international press, Vanity Fair, The Independent, The Guardian, The New Arab, The National, Vogue Arabia, and it was presented at the Hay Festival in May 2021 with excerpts read by actresses Kate Winslet, Juliet Stephenson, Suzanne Packer, Vanessa Redgrave, Louise Brealey, Livia Firth, Dame Stephanie Shirley and was also translated to Greek. Her first nonfiction book ‘The Invisible Reality’ was published in Greece in 2004.
As a fiction writer in February 2023 she produced and presented in the British Library her first theatre play, the staged adaptation ‘Alexander the Great-Between Dreams and Imagination’ inspired by a modern epic poem and connecting Greek philosophy to contemporary political issues. The three sold-out performances attracted an audience of 500+ theatre-lovers generating raving feedback from the audience.
Elizabeth has a Minor in Classics, a BA in German Literature, a MA in Transnational Media and Globalisation (London City University), a MBA-level Diploma from Saïd Business School University of Oxford and a Masters on Creative Writing from Harvard University.
