My guest on this episode is Leanne Toshiko Simpson. Leanne is an author and educator who co-founded a reflective writing program at Canada’s largest mental health hospital and teaches at the University of Toronto. Her debut is the novel Never Been Better, published by HarperCollins Canada in 2024. That book recently won the KOBO Emerging Writer Prize in the category of Romance. In a starred review, Kirkus Reviews called the novel “a funny, refreshing, and generous story full of wisdom on mental health.”
Leanne and I talk about how she, as someone with bipolar disorder, handles moments of emotional upheaval, about the benefits of being a writer publicly identified with that disorder, and about the reaction she has received, from romance readers and from readers interested in reading about issues of mental health, to writing a rom-com novel about pysch ward survivors.
This podcast is produced and hosted by Nathan Whitlock, in partnership with The Walrus.
Music: "simple-hearted thing" by Alex Lukashevsky. Used with permission.
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