Farah Heron on Romance, Representation and Realism Ahead of Burlington Public Library Talk

By: Maisha Hasan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Burlington Local-News.ca

 

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day and all that precedes it, the Burlington Public Library is hosting an author talk with critically acclaimed author Farah Heron on Tuesday, February 10. Heron will discuss the romance genre with all its quirks and nuances, as well as her latest contemporary adult romance novel, Just Playing House. 

Her work in both young adult (YA) and adult romance has received praise from outlets including CBC, Teen Vogue, USA Today, and NPR, to name a modest few. 

 

Heron is known for blending humour, emotional depth, and culturally nuanced storytelling. Ahead of her Burlington appearance, she spoke to us about writing across age groups, shifting expectations in the romance genre, and why stories about joy and love can carry deeper social meaning.

 

Below, Heron shares more of her romance writing expertise. Answers have been edited lightly for flow and clarity.

What first got you into writing romance?

I always wanted to write, but I didn’t actually start [fiction] writing until I was in my late 30s. I used to write non-fiction stuff at work, and I also had an active blog for a long time. One day, I decided enough is enough, it’s time to do the thing I always wanted to do. Before I started writing, I was going through a bit of a difficult time because of some medical issues, so I was reading a lot of romance for comfort then, so when it came to starting writing, I  knew that was exactly what I wanted to do.

 

Readers increasingly expect emotional depth in romance. How do you balance light-hearted storytelling with heavier themes?

I love humour. I love laughing and the ability to tell a serious story, but still have [humour], it feels more relatable. We all go through stuff — life is full of drama and full of tragedy — if they’re told in a human way, where we can find humour in it, where we can still find connection with other people, it seems a little bit more real. People say rom-coms are unrealistic, but to me, it seems more realistic than very heavy storytelling. I always love the balance of trying to figure out how far I can go with emotional stories while still keeping it readable, and at the end of the day, it’s entertainment, and I want it to stay that way. I hate when people say rom-coms are fluff or anything like that because I don’t think they are at all.

 

How does your approach change when shifting between adult and YA readers? 

Writing rom-coms [in that same way] is almost impossible for teenagers because they aren’t able to look at the world in the same way. They’re young. I try really hard to get into the mind of a teenager. I used to work with troubled teens, so I know a lot about what teens are like, the thought processes that they would go through. Plus, when I started writing YA, I had two teenage kids, and I quickly learned that the things that I could use as humour in adult books, I can’t use in YA books because teenagers aren’t yet able to laugh at themselves for the most part, which is totally understandable. 

 

I get it. They’re feeling everything for the very first time. They’re not cynical about anything yet. 

 

There [have to be] other ways to bring humour in with teenagers, like setting or funny experiences. Funny things that are outside of the person, as opposed to funny things coming from the person, if that makes sense. There is definitely a difference in how I approach the adult voice versus the teenage voice. I love writing for both, but it is harder for me to write for teens because I have to kind of get out of my own head and think about how a teenager would react to things.

 

What led you to centre South Asian characters in your stories, and how has that shaped your writing journey? 

My first book came out in 2019, and before that, there weren’t a lot of South Asian romance writers. One in particular, Sonali Dev, it wasn’t until I read her book that I decided I could write South Asian characters. There were so few of us, now [there are more]. I don’t know if I always wanted to write South Asian characters when I first started, but there was nothing else I wanted to write. Now, especially when it comes to writing YA, one of the things that I find is [my daughter] always says she doesn’t find South Asian YA romances that are anything like her. They’re all the children of immigrants who are fighting back against very strict parents. They’re struggling with their identity. That isn’t her experience because she’s not the child of immigrants; she’s the grandchild of immigrants. 

 

I love that there are stories where people are examining the way that we raise our children and the expectations. I’m so happy those stories exist, but I love being able to tell the story of the South Asian character that isn’t really struggling with their identity, that isn’t fighting back with their parents all the time, that isn’t trying to avoid an arranged marriage or whatever is in their cultures. I don’t think I ever want to stop doing that because I think it is helpful.

 

Have you seen changes in the publishing landscape for authors of colour over the course of your career? 

We can now tell stories about people falling in love, where it’s not about cultural things or anything like that. It’s just a brown person existing in the world. However, I tend to be very optimistic, but I am seeing [different] trends now, which isn’t a surprise when you can see what’s going on in the world with the anti-immigrant sentiments and whatnot, that it is getting a little bit harder again to tell our stories. That could be because the “trend” of diversity is kind of past now, which is stupid because I’m not a trend. I’m a person. 

 

Do you see your work — or romance writing more broadly — as political?

I always say that I can’t not be political because I’m a person of colour and the child of immigrants, so my existence is political. Writing joyful stories about people who are marginalized in the world is always going to be political because it’s challenging people’s perceptions of what it means to be a woman of colour in Canada. It’s challenging all of that. So it has to be political. I don’t know if I wanted it to be when I first started writing. I wasn’t trying to change the world. I wasn’t trying to make a political stance, but it’s kind of hard not to, especially as we see even just women’s rights being rolled back in so many places. A woman getting what she wants is very refreshing. 

 

Do romance novels reflect an attainable reality, or are they primarily fantasy? 

I’ve been married for 25 years. People always ask, “Are you writing about your own romance?” Not even a little bit — it’s all fiction. Nothing is based on me. Maybe my books would be a bit different if I had been in the dating world somewhat recently, but it’s been way too long. 

 

It would be really nice if a romance followed what most relationships follow, which is: you meet, you fall in love, everything goes great, you get married. It tends not to happen within two weeks — that “everything goes to hell” kind of situation that we write about in a book. But that’s not very interesting to read. 

 

I do think women can learn a lot about what they can expect in a relationship from a romance. Especially when we’re talking about heterosexual male-female relationships in romance, the men tend to be supportive. They tend to value consent. All these things show what a relationship can look like. I don’t think that I’m writing unrealistic men; my husband is wonderful. We don’t have the conflict that exists in a romance, but he also values me, values my opinion, lets me live my life, lets me do my thing. 

 

Farah Heron will discuss writing adult and teen novels full of romance, humour, and cultural depth, including her latest contemporary adult romance, Just Playing House, at her Burlington Public Library talk on February 10, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.