The School of Creative Writing is pleased to congratulate Léa Taranto, MFA. Léa’s graduate thesis is a memoir/autofiction entitled A Drop in the Ocean: Resurfacing from Severe OCD.
Léa is a Chinese Jewish Canadian writer who spent her adolescence in residential treatment for severe OCD and comorbid disorders. She writes the stories she yearned for back then—stories that acknowledge and empower neurodivergence’s intersectionalities such as race, gender, sexuality, and class. While in her first year of the MFA, she completed Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio. In her final year, she became a member of PRISM international’s editorial board. Léa’s work is forthcoming in Vallum Magazine and can be found in: Room Magazine, Emerge 20: The Writer’s Studio Anthology, Untethered Magazine, and Transitions Magazine.
Léa’s memoir/autofiction novel, A Drop in the Ocean: Resurfacing from Severe OCD, utilizes authenticity of voice to its fullest through the epistolary form. It recounts protagonist Mira Durand’s first steps towards recovery from her life-threatening obsessive compulsive disorder and anorexia as they converge with quintessential teenage experiences like complex friendships, first love, and navigating family dynamics. Written with vivid honesty and immersive sensory details, this novel depicts Mira’s realistic, nonlinear growth as radical empathy expands both her sense of community and self.
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