Leanne Toshiko Simpson describes herself as a mixed-race Yonsei (or fourth-generation Japanese Canadian) writer, educator and psychiatric survivor from Toronto. She has a degree in professional communications from Toronto Metropolitan University, graduated from the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus’s Creative Writing Program and holds an MFA from Guelph University. Simpson is a doctoral candidate (EdD) in Social Justice Education at the University of Toronto (OISE). While she has taught undergraduates at several Toronto-area universities, she now focuses her teaching at Trinity College, University of Toronto where she leads seminars in disability arts and BIPOC literature.
Fiction
Never Been Better: A Novel
New York: HarperCollins Canada, 2024.
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
Dee, Misa, and Matt were the “three musketeers” of the psych ward. Matt is a teddy bear musician with no discernable coping mechanisms. Wildly efficient Misa is quick to take care of others while neglecting herself. And Dee is a puddle with a heart of gold, eager to convince everyone that she’s finally turning things around. A year after discharge, Matt and Misa are tying the knot in Turks and Caicos, surrounded by guests who have no idea where they met. But the secrecy isn’t sitting well with Dee, who has been hopelessly in love with Matt since before she got kicked out of the hospital.
When Dee arrives at the swanky resort with her high-voltage sister Tilley, it’s now or never to confess how she feels about Matt. But disrupting her best friends’ nuptials would jeopardize the entire support system that holds them all together. When it comes to happily ever afters, how is a girl supposed to choose between love and recovery? Introducing a sparkling new voice in commercial fiction, Never Been Better revels in the heartache and hilarity of falling in love when you haven’t quite figured out how to live with yourself.
Anthology
Feel Ways: A Scarborough Anthology
Simpson, Leanne Toshiko. ” .” In Feel Ways: A Scarborough Anthology, edited by Adrian De Leon, Téa Mutonji & Natasha Ramoutar. Toronto: Mawenzi House, 2021,
Anthology (Short story)
The Journey Prize Stories. 31
Simpson, Leanne Toshiko. “Monsters.” In The Journey Prize Stories. 31, selected by Carleigh Baker, Catherine Hernandez, Joshua Whitehead. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2019, 132-133.
First published in Release Any Words Stuck Inside of You. [Alberta?]: Applebeard Editions, [2018 or 2019].