Léa Taranto is a disabled Chinese Jewish Canadian writer who lives with OCD and comorbidities. A graduate of both SFU’s The Writer’s Studio and UBC’s MFA program, A Drop in the Ocean is her debut novel. She resides on traditional, unceded Halkomelem and Squamish territories in BC.

Whistler Writers Festival: For readers who aren’t familiar with your work, how would you describe it in two to three sentences?

Léa Taranto: My writing focuses on voice, emotional honesty and a sense of urgency enhanced by immersive description. Recurring themes I explore across genre are the intersections between mental health, race, gender, ability and sexuality, the legacy of family—whether blood or found—and folklore. A Drop in the Ocean, my debut novel, is based on the journals I wrote coming of age in residential treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), depression, and anorexia.

WWF: The theme of this year’s festival is Joyful Resistance. How do writers participate in joyful resistance through their writing?

LT: Sometimes, we write to cope. When there is little else we have any power over, being able to not only record but also own our truth is an act of resistance that reclaims agency. Other times the musicality of a poem, the imaginative scope of a well-built world, or a vibrant character’s growth across the pages are important because they bring joy. When writing is motivated by values like joy, justice or liberation rather than by profit, it becomes resistance. Literature created with these values in mind educates and empowers by centring the nuance of marginalized and underrepresented lived experiences.

WWF: What is something in the literary or writing community that inspires you to keep writing?

LT: I’m inspired by texts that make me feel wonder, sonder, and empathy. Sonder is John Koenig’s term for the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. It tempers the oversimplification of empathy as being able to completely inhabit another’s feelings or experiences. The best writing sinks me deeply into a speaker or character’s life while also acknowledging the immersion can never be complete. I aim to do the same with my writing, which I see as a dialogue across time and space with all writers who share this goal. On a day-to-day level, being in writing groups with Canlit friends I’ve made, either through school or online, keeps me accountable and encouraged. I enjoy doing pomodoro style sprints and exchanging more polished works for feedback.

She appears in The Honest Voice: Writing Youth Characters That Feel Real with Whitney Gardner, Mahtab Narsimshan and the WIBA winner for children’s writing on Nov. 2. Tickets go on sale Sept. 10.