Léa Taranto (she/her) is a graduate from the University of British Columbia's Creative Writing MFA program, alumnus from Simon Fraser University's The Writer’s Studio, and member of PRISM international’s poetry editorial board. Her debut YA novel, A Drop in the Ocean, was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and will be published in May 2025 by Arsenal Pulp Press. Find her shorter work in publications like: Upon a Midnight Clear: More Christmas Epiphanies, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Humber Literary Review, Grain Magazine, Vallum Magazine, Room Magazine, Emerge 20: The Writer’s Studio Anthology, The Wayne Literary Review, Untethered Magazine, and Transitions Magazine, among others. She lives on the traditional, unceded land of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ (Halkomelem) and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) speaking peoples in British Columbia.
Born in Paris, France to a Chinese Canadian mother and a French Jewish father, Léa spent her childhood reading fantasy instead of playing outside. Her adolescence was much the same, except certified in various inpatient facilities for life-threatening OCD and comorbid disorders. While not great for her cardio or impressing fellow patients, escaping into compelling stories and recounting 13 journals’ worth of her own misadventures kept her coping and alive. She writes the literature she’d yearned for back then, (sometimes with a speculative element) where neurodivergent readers can see themselves reflected in her characters. Since mental health does not exist in a vacuum, her writing acknowledges and empowers its intersectionalities, including race, ability, gender, and sexuality. It actively seeks to combat ableist notions that the only ending for neurodivergent narratives is when a patient leaves treatment “cured.”
