LEESA DEAN
WRITER•INSTRUCTOR•EDITOR
Books
The Filling Station
A figure in an Elizabeth Bishop poem—a charming Brazilian man named Manuelzinho,“the worst gardener since Cain”—so piqued Leesa Dean’s interest that she mined words and images from Bishop’s body of work in order to create a larger world for him to occupy. The result is The Filling Station, a lyrical novella-in-verse drawn uniquely from Bishop’s lexicon in which Manuelzinho takes a wife (and a lover), has a daughter, and grieves his dying father. Shifting from rain-soaked villages to the barren, haunting landscape of Itabira, this novella is a compelling example of poetry’s extraordinary capacity for encapsulating human experiences—love, time, memory—and for reanimating those experiences in the reader’s imagination.
Waiting for the Cyclone
"The stories in Waiting for the Cyclone announce the arrival of a confident and original new voice. Leesa Dean effortlessly--or so it seems--grabs the readers attention and doesn't let go, revealing the comedy, cruelty, tenderness and shame native to every human relationship. A remarkable debut." - 2017 Trillium Award Jury Citation
Women are too often cast in literature as inherently good and dependable—but this is not the case in the audacious stories of Waiting for the Cyclone.​ Mary, a closet drinker, leaves her children with Debbie, a seemingly perfect housewife who shoots pharmaceuticals at night. Alison vacations with her husband, but wakes up in the tattooed arms of another man. Donna lies to her family about volunteering in Afghanistan so she can parasail with a lover in Turkey. With authenticity and intensity, Dean challenges traditional literary archetypes by revealing female characters that are nuanced, contradictory, and boldly unapologetic.
“Waiting for the Cyclone is a radiant debut—beautifully written, passionate, and whip smart—from a refreshing new voice bound to make her mark in Canadian literature.” Ayelet Tsabari, author of The Best Place on Earth
“Far from shelter, readers will find themselves pulled closer and closer to the eye of this storm. Brace yourself: these women are unflinchingly real. You will not be able to look away.” Elisabeth de Mariaffi, author of The Devil You Know
“Subversive, illicit, and with a knack for final lines packed with innuendo, Waiting for the Cyclone is a pleasure readers need not feel guilty about.” Quill & Quire
​​"In Waiting for the Cyclone, the through-line [is] a gale-like force pushing the narrative in a surprise direction – not a twist ending, but a destination unheralded at the beginning." - The Globe and Mail
Chapbooks
The Desert of Itabira
The Desert of Itabira is a 25 page excerpt from The Filling Station that was first published as a stand-alone piece.
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The excerpt is mesmerizing. It evokes the desert paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe for me, extremely visual and startling: “We are taken to a red temple/a woman in a cloak of bones/greets us in a language/none of us know”. I am in love with the dark imagery of this work.
-Review by Amanda Earl
Apogee/Perigee
In this series of 24 interconnected visual poems, Dean asks us to consider different versions of ourselves and how we move through the 12 houses of our lives, inspired by Vedic astrology.
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"Apogee/Perigee is about relationships near and far. What is the poet’s relationship to situations, people, and other everyday items? I see these poems as points on an astrology chart, which is circular and the connecting points to various houses/states of being. This is a sacred, esoteric book of poems not to be approached offhandedly. Slowly, by studying these dialed-up, circles of potency, there is a lot revealed." -Review by Susan Kay Anderson
Work in Anthologies
"When Saturn Returns"
A call to action and accountability. – Shelagh Rogers
Needless to say, moments like now, when the hurdles to becoming a respected author are at their lowest. When the only hurdles to being published are the quality of your writing and your patience to deal with certain less and less important gatekeepers. Moments in history like this, must be acknowledged and celebrated. That's what this anthology is: It's a celebration. A moment to cry out, “Look how many of us have a voice! There are stories, and poetry in this country that are about people like me! I am not alone!”
"Home Stay"
Minority Reports gathers together the best prose writing in Quebec–all short pieces–from the winners and finalists of the last three years of the Quebec Writing Competition. Montreal’s CBC Radio One and the Quebec Writers’ Federation created the competition in 1999. It has resulted in three previous anthologies–Telling Stories, Short Stuff, and In Other Words. The winning stories are broadcast on CBC Radio and published in Maisonneuve magazine.