QWF’s latest featured member is Lea Beddia.
Lea is a writer for young adults, high school English teacher, storyteller, and mom of three. Her most recent novel, No Brainer (Orca Book Publishers, 2026), is a story about honouring girls’ choices and is inspired by the many young women Lea has worked with in her twenty years of teaching. It has been described as “fearless and filled with jubilant moxie; a must-read” by Kirkus Reviews. Lea’s novel Outta Here (Lorimer Children and Teens, 2023) was a finalist for QWF’s 2025 Janet Savage Blachford Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Lea is also a member of the Confabulation Montreal community where she tells true stories, mostly of her embarrassing childhood. She lives in Joliette, Quebec with her family.
QWF Membership Services Coordinator Riley Palanca spoke to Lea about her latest novel, the topics her writing explores, and more. Here are Five Questions for Lea Beddia:
1. How did you get started writing for and about young adults?
I almost exclusively read YA literature. There’s something about the drama, the immediacy, and the raw yet hopeful way YA fiction acknowledges emotions. Many people assume that students entering high school have mastered reading, but that’s often not the case. Many are still learning to decode words. Reading comprehension skills require tenacity and consistent effort. Progress can be slow, so kudos to the young people taking each step! Writing novels for striving readers is a love letter to those tenacious kids putting in the time every day to do what comes easily to some of their peers. What’s more hopeful than that?
2. Many of your protagonists are young people confronting unfairness, whether in their communities, schools, or homes. What draws you to stories where young people are pushed to respond to injustice?
Reality. Young people are often determined and grounded in their beliefs, shaped by their experiences. They try to make sense of those experiences and find solutions to their challenges, often without support from adults. They are smart and resilient, though often in need of guidance. They are vocal about what they feel is unfair. They are sometimes loud and repetitive, mostly because they haven’t yet found someone willing to guide or to listen to them. Reading about teenagers who share their feelings, passions, and concerns, even in fiction, can be validating and helps build creative thinking and problem-solving skills. Writing each of my characters feels genuine, real, and necessary.
3. No Brainer tackles questions of body autonomy and fairness within a school setting. How did you approach writing about such a charged issue for a younger audience?
It’s based on real issues students have openly shared with me. As an educator, I believe that dress codes are important, but we must also understand from where young people—especially young women—draw their perspective. I want all girls to feel confident, comfortable, and accepted. The double standard in dress codes hasn’t been erased with time. Girls are scrutinized for what they wear, and too often, an adult enforcing the rules will decide whether what a girl is wearing is appropriate. They are watching her, but do they think of how that scrutiny makes her feel about her body? We have to consider the long-term effects on the perception of “being a girl” when all she hears is that her body is wrong, her body is too much, or her body is the problem. Given that, I also believe that school is a place to teach students, with patience, how they will be expected to dress in the workplace. Balance is the answer to everything.
4. You depict schools as spaces of both growth and conflict. As a teacher, how do you navigate writing about institutions of which you’re also part?
It can be tricky. I never want to make a student or staff member feel they are the reason I am writing about something loaded. The issues I explore are real, but writing about them requires sensitivity so that young people and adults can find solutions and compromises, rather than an impasse, as we often see when students and staff go head-to-head. Young people have so many smart things to share and offer perspectives we may not have considered. I believe in listening to them to best develop our policies and practices. And why don’t we? Because they’re younger? Most of my students have skills and experiences I never will, and we need to value those. We also have to stop treating adulthood as the end of learning. Educators grow too. When we learn new things, especially when we have to unlearn others, conflict is inevitable—and with it comes the need for compromise.
5. Are there any advantages or challenges in being a writer living in a small town?
I grew up in Montreal and lived there until I started teaching at 22. I now live in a small town with a population of fewer than 2,000 and work in a town with about 20,000. Because of the sparse population, every problem seems magnified because it is not drowned out by so much noise. But so is every joy magnified. That said, being far away from the city makes it harder to take advantage of services or workshops and keeps me from being on different committees. Still, I wouldn’t give up the country life. I am close enough that I can enjoy the vibrancy of Montreal or Toronto when I want to, but far enough away to literally get a breath of fresh air. There’s nothing more conducive to creativity than looking out my window at a mountain and a forest.
Thank you, Lea!
No Brainer is available now from Orca Book Publishers.
A book launch is scheduled for No Brainer on June 28th, 2:00 pm, at Babar Books.
For more about Lea Beddia, visit her website.