Léa Taranto is described on her publisher’s website as a disabled Chinese Jewish Canadian writer who lives with OCD and comorbid disorders. Taranto was born in Paris, France, to a Chinese Canadian mother and a French Jewish father. Taranto holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and completed studies at the Simon Fraser University Writer’s Studio. She resides on traditional, unceded Halkomelem and Squamish territories in BC. Her writings have been published in numerous literary magazines and anthologies.
Fiction (Young adult)
A Drop in the Ocean
Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025.
forthcoming May 2025
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Sixteen-year-old Mira Durand has just been checked into the Residency Adolescent Treatment Centre for obsessive compulsive and comorbid disorders. Four years of being passed around different psych wards like a hot potato have only worsened her OCD and anorexia. Her brutal, religious compulsions, which she believes keep her mom safe, make her less of a clean freak and more of a freak freak. No wonder her only friend is her journal.
At the Residency’s Ward 2, Mira discovers that her shrink is a fellow fantasy nerd and that her wardmates have enough of their own high-risk behaviours to tolerate hers. The complex friendships she forms with them (including a first love), the slow trust she builds with her treatment team, and the outside and family visits she earns give her things to look forward to beyond the drudgery of her compulsions. But it takes visiting Gung Gung, her dying maternal grandfather, for her to realize that to truly live, she must fight the cognitive distortions at the heart of her compulsions.