Lesley Choyce

Background

Lesley Choyce was born on March 21, 1951, in Riverside, New Jersey. He is the son of George, a mechanic, and Norma, a homemaker, Choyce. Also, Leslye has an elder brother Gordon.

As Lesley Choyce remembers, they lived "in a tiny rounded house trailer that sat up on cinder blocks in a grove of black locust trees, a wedge of land between two country roads that would become virtual highways by the time they became an adult."

Education

Lesley Choyce graduated from Cinnaminson High School in 1969. Then he studied at Rutgers University, where he got a Bachelor of Arts in 1972. Besides, he got a Master of Arts at the Montclair State College in 1974 and the City University of New York in 1983.

Career

During his education, in 1970, Lesley Choyce worked the night shift loading trucks at North Penn Transfer. On weekends, he went home to work at the nursing home. Lesley worked as a rehabilitation counselor at Referrals Workshop in 1973-1974, and also in 1974, he was a coordinator of writing tutorial program at Bloomfield College. Then for about four years, Lesley taught at Montclair State College. Lesley worked as a rehabilitation counselor at Referrals Workshop in 1973-1974, and also in 1974, he was a coordinator of writing tutorial program at Bloomfield College. Then about four years, Lesley taught at Montclair State College.

Lesley Choyce moved to Canada in 1978. He worked for the federal government as an alternative energy consultant. Later, in 1979-1980 he served as a writer and consultant at Energy, Mines, and Resources.

Besides, in 1978-1983 Lesley was a creative writing instructor of the City of Halifax continuing education program.

Lesley Choyce founded Pottersfield Press, a small literary publisher located at Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia. Initially, Pottersfield published an annual anthology of writers from Atlantic Canada, and soon the press was publishing books by poets and fiction writers throughout the region. By 2019, Lesley had published 99 of his works and, through Pottersfield Press, over 180 books by others.

During those years, Lesley introduced many first-time book authors to the reading public, including Maxine Tynes, George Elliott Clarke, Bruce Graham, Jon Tattrie, Joan Baxter, Frank Cameron, Steven Laffoley, Neil Peart, and Anthony Sherwood. Lesley Choyce has also published well-known authors such as Thomas Raddall, Claire Mowat, Harold Horwood, Daniel Petrie, Sheree Fitch, Budge Wilson, William Patrick Kinsella, Ken McGoogan and Wayne Curtis. Some Pottersfield books went on to win awards for their authors.

Lesley Choyce has given readings across Canada, including Labrador and the Northwest Territories, also in Ireland and England. The Canadian Consulate in Tokyo hosted him to perform and give talks in schools. Lesley performed as part of the Vancouver World's Fair 1986. At home in the Maritimes, he has given readings and workshops at hundreds of schools over the years.

Lesley has sat on several Canada Council juries and has been a judge on several national and regional literary prizes. He is a past president of the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia and former board member of the Literary Press Group and the Canadian Writers Foundation.

While writing and publishing, Lesley Choyce has also had a distinguished teaching career. He began teaching at the City University of New York and after moving to Nova Scotia, teaching stints at Mount Saint Vincent University, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Saint Mary's University. At Dalhousie University, he has remained a permanent part-time instructor. Lesley teaches English in the Transition Year Program as well as Creative Writing.

Beginning in 1972, Lesley Choyce became a freelance broadcaster. For nearly thirty years, Choyce hosted and co-produced about 300 episodes of East Coast Authors, Choyce Words, and Off the Page. These were literary talk shows that appeared on Channel 9 (Eastlink), Maine Public Television Schedule, Vison TV, and BookTelevision.

One of the reasons Lesley Choyce moved to Nova Scotia, was for the sea, and in particular the waves. He began surfing in New Jersey in 1967, and he continues to surf today in the North Atlantic. Lesley was one of the pioneers of Canadian winter surfing, and in 1993 he was the Canadian National Surfing Champion.

In the late 1990s, Lesley explored another one of his passions by founding the seminal spoken word rock band the SurfPoets along with Doug Barron and Stan Carew.

As a writer, Lesley Choyce has written and published literary novels, poetry, collection of short stories, children's books, and young adult novels as well as history, memoir, humor, and creative nonfiction.

Lesley Choyce's teen novels feature high-interest storylines and accessible vocabulary, making them popular among reluctant readers.

In his first book, 1989's Skateboard Shakedown, a skateboarder, his girlfriend, and a group of friends take on a corrupt mayor who wants to turn their favorite skateboard site into a shopping mall.

Rock music takes center stage in several of Choyce's novels, including Hungry Lizards and Thunderbowl.

In Hungry Lizards, a sixteen-year-old rock band leader finds the advantages of winning a performing contract at a local club outweighed by the realities of the entertainment business, the conflicting time demands of school and work, and the temptations of a questionable lifestyle. Thunderbowl finds talented teen guitarist Jeremy winning a band playoff; the prize is a chance to perform at a popular bar called the Dungeon. The opportunity forces the teen to weigh the importance of his obligations to his family and finishing his education over following his dream of being a professional musician. His ultimate choice prompted by some harsh lessons about the life he has chosen.

Wrong Time, Wrong Place explores racial tensions and social injustice through the story of Corey, a young man with one parent who is black and one who is white. Corey first becomes aware of the disadvantages of being biracial when he is branded as a troublemaker and rebel and begins to notice how both students and faculty treat lighter-skinned students differently. Through his uncle Larry's positive example and the man's stories of a black community in Halifax called Africville, Corey begins to identify with his black forebears.

Coping with the loss of a parent and the many feelings that result is the subject of Shoulder the Sky, Choyce's award-winning 2002 novel. Seemingly untroubled and thus encouraged by his father to explore his emotions by writing, sixteen-year-old Martin Emerson divides himself into three different personas: the average, everyday, schoolgoing teen; the outgoing, egocentric Emerson, who comes into being on Martin's Website; and the nameless guy who sometimes blacks out and cannot remember things that have just happened. In between the precocious Internet rants of Emerson, Martin details his day-to-day life before and after his mother's death, including his efforts at rebellion, his unrequited love for a classmate, and his friendship with fellow nerd Darrell. Ultimately, a family road trip to Alaska causes the teen to confront his mother's death and begin the process of reworking his fractured self into whole cloth.

In addition to fiction for older readers, Lesley Choyce has produced several chapter books for early elementary-graders, many published by his own Pottersfield Press.

As part of Pottersfield's illustrated series of readers, Lesley penned Famous at Last, which focuses on a nine-year-old who turns a role in a local television bean commercial into a chance at superstardom, even though he hates beans.

Other beginning readers written by Lesley Choyce include several volumes in Formac's "First Novel" series, all of which feature a high-spirited and likable ten-year-old named Carrie.

Lesley Choyce currently continues to write and publish, teach, and mentor.

Achievements

• Lesley Choyce is well-known as the author of literary fiction, short stories, poetry, creative nonfiction, and young adult novels. He runs Pottersfield Press, and he edited several literary anthologies and hosted several television shows over the years.
  
  He was a finalist of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Award in 1981, and was shortlisted for The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 1987. In 1990 Lesley became a winner of the Event magazine's Creative Nonfiction Competition, and in 1994, he was a finalist of Manitoba's Young Reader's Choice Award. Lesley Choyce was shortlisted for the Hackmatack Award for children's writing in 2000 and White Pine Award in 2004. Also, he was a finalist for the Canadian Librarians Association Young Adult Award in 2005. Lesley became a poet laureate for the Peter Gzowski Invitational Golf Tournament in 2000. Besides, he was the best writer of Halifax by Coast Magazine in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005.
  
  Lesley Choyce was one of the pioneers of Canadian winter surfing. He took the first place in the Canadian Surfing Championships in 1995.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Dance the Rocks Ashore

    (Dance the Rocks Ashore contains substantial new stories i...)

    1997
  • The Coasts of Canada

    (In this eclectic history of the sea's elemental power ove...)

    2002
  • Dark End of Dream Street

    (Tara's life in Halifax is about as good as it gets, she g...)

    1994
  • Ecstasy Conspiracy

    (This literary whodunit pulls us into the world of America...)

    1992
  • The Republic of Nothing

    (The Republic of Nothing opens in the 1950s on Whalebone I...)

    1994
  • Shoulder the Sky

    (Winner of the 2003 Ann Connor Brimer Award, short-listed ...)

    2002
  • Sudden Impact

    (When Kurt is hurt in a soccer game and ends up in the hos...)

    2005
  • Carrie's Camping Adventure

    (Carrie says she'll organize everything for a camping trip...)

    2001
  • Big Burn

    (Set in Canada's East Coast, this novel from the award-win...)

    1995
  • Cold Clear Morning

    (Taylor Colby and his childhood sweetheart, Laura, abandon...)

    2002
  • Clearcut Danger

    (The company proposing to build a new pulp and paper mill ...)

    1992
  • Coastline of Forgetting

    (In this poetic journal, he documents his time hiking one ...)

    1995
  • World Enough

    (When their farm gets expropriated to make way for the Poi...)

    1998
  • Good Idea Gone Bad

    (Mick and his friends hang out in front of the downtown li...)

    1993
  • An Avalanche of Ocean

    (A book about a love affair with Nova Scotia, about the se...)

    1987
  • Wave Watch

    (Randy surfs the waves in April off his Lawrencetown, Nova...)

    1990
  • Roid Rage

    (Craig has finally made the first string on the high schoo...)

    1999
  • The End of Ice

    (Choyce writes of his experience of living in Nova Scotia ...)

    1982
  • Sea of Tranquility: A Novel

    (For Sylvie, Ragged Island - and the whales who swam aroun...)

    2003
  • Full Tilt

    (When Greg discovers a refugee family stranded on the rock...)

    1993
  • The Summer of Apartment X

    (Fred Winger and his two buddies, Richard and Brian, inten...)

    1999
  • The Republic of Nothing

    (A small Canadian island declares its independence to the ...)

    1999
  • Go For It, Carrie

    (Carrie wants to rollerblade, to zoom down the sidewalk at...)

    1997
  • Wrong Time, Wrong Place

    (Corey's told over and over in a hundred different ways wh...)

    1991
  • Carrie's Crowd

    (Carrie dreams about being a singer and starring in music ...)

    1998
  • Smoke and Mirrors

    (Sixteen-year-old Simon has always been considered odd. Th...)

    2004
  • Far Enough Island

    (Sarah's family has had a streak of bad luck. Her father i...)

    2000
  • Famous at Last

    (Another chapter book for the younger set. Lavishly illust...)

    1998
  • Skateboard Shakedown

    (Gary Sutherland lives for skateboarding. Gary and his fri...)

    1989
  • Thunderbowl

    (Jeremy's band is really hot. Thunderbowl is on the way up...)

    2004
  • Refuge Cove

    (Greg is an avid sailor. On a solo trip of the rugged Newf...)

    2002
  • The Hungry Lizards 1990
  • Falling Through the Cracks 1996
  • Eastern sure 1981
  • Billy Botzweiler's Last Dance and Other Stories 1984
  • Downwind: A novel 1984
  • Conventional emotions 1984
  • Coming up for air 1988
  • Second Season of Jonas Macpherson 1989
  • Magnificent Obsessions 1991
  • The Dream Auditor 1986
  • Trapdoor to Heaven: New Fiction 1996
  • December six 1988
  • Transcendental Anarchy 1993
  • Nova Scotia 1996
  • Re-inventing the wheel 1980
  • Fast living 1982
  • The top of the Heart 1986
  • Beautiful Sadness 1998
  • Caution to the Wind 2000
  • Typographical Eras 2003
  • Revenge of the Optimist 2004

• music

  • Long Lost Planet 1999

Religion

At school, Lesley Choyce attended the Palmyra Moravian Church. By his memories, he "had a hard time with much of the logic of the Old Testament. There were not a lot of satisfying answers to his blasphemous questions at Sunday school."

Views

As a student, Lesley Choyce actively opposed the war. He took part in a major antiwar demonstration at Fort Bragg, where protesters had gone marching inside the army base, led by Jane Fonda. As Lesley remembered: "We stood there with our signs, chanting, surrounded by hundreds of soldiers with rifles and I felt a powerful sense of unity with my fellow protesters. I was both scared and proud at the same time to be doing something I believed in."

As a writer, Lesley Choyce writes a lot for teenagers. He thinks that the massive force of social conditioning that comes from commercialism and pop culture deprives many teens of exploring their own unique identity. Lesley believes that his characters in his books "resonate for both guys and girls and encourages them to be who they want to be."

Quotations: "A voice in my head told me to write about what makes you feel the most uncomfortable. So I tackled fear and my male anger and my biggest failures. Even more dangerous, I tried writing about the most ordinary of things: a morning in Woolco, an unexceptional day, the thread of things that keeps life together."

"Throughout it all, there is, I hope, a record of a search for love and meaning fraught with failure and recovery. Maybe I've developed a basic mistrust of the rational, logical conclusions. I've only had the briefest glimpses beyond the surface, but I've seen enough to know that sometimes facts are not enough. There are times to make the leap, to get metaphysical, and suppose that we all live larger lives than appearances would suggest."

Membership

• 

  International PEN , United Kingdom

• 

  Atlantic Publishers Association , Canada

• 

  Association of Canadian Publishers , Canada

• 

  Literary Press Group , Canada

• Canadian Poetry Association , Canada

• 

  Lesley Choyce is a member of the board of Canadian Writers' Foundation.

  Canadian Writers' Foundation , Canada

• 

  Writers' Union of Canada , Canada

• 

  Writers Federation of Nova Scotia , Canada

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Allan Weiss: "For all its diversity, Choyce's fiction expresses a unified vision of concern for the environment and a need for all people to rediscover their ties to nature. He uses the rationalist genre of science fiction as well as surrealism, fantasy, and satire to encourage his readers to see the world in nonscientific ways. For Choyce, humans have suffered and made their world suffer, for their limited perspective: their utilitarian, selfish, rationalist approach. To be healthy and to regain the health of the world, they need a more holistic vision, one that recognizes they are part of a larger human and natural universe."

Interests

• Transcendental wood splitting

• Writers

  Jules Verne, Herbert George Wells, Isaac Asimov, Robert Anson Heinlein, John Fowles

• Sport & Clubs

  Surfing

Connections

Lesley Choyce is married to Terry Paul Choyce. They have two children: Sunyata and Pamela.

Father:

George Choyce

Mother:

Norma Choyce

Norma Choyce's maiden name was Willis.

Wife:

Terry Paul Choyce

Daughter:

Sunyata Choyce

Daughter:

Pamela Choyce

Brother:

Gordon Choyce

colleague:

Maxine Tynes

Maxine Tynes is a Nova Scotian writer who writes from a deeply personal place. Her heritage and community play an integral part in her writing.

colleague:

George Elliott Clarke

George Elliott Clarke is a Canadian novelist and poet.

colleague:

Bruce Graham

Bruce Graham is a Nova Scotia writer and former broadcaster, who for many years was the face of evening television news in Maritime homes. He is the author of six books, three of which had transformed into stage plays.

colleague:

Jon Tattrie

Jon Tattrie is an award-winning author and multi-media journalist who has written about Nova Scotia history for Lonely Planet, Canadian Geographic, Reader's Digest, The Globe and Mail, and many other outlets.

colleague:

Joan Baxter

Joan Baxter is a Nova Scotian author, journalist, development researcher/writer, an anthropologist. Her 2017 book, The Mill - Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest, won the 2018 Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing and was shortlisted for three other awards.

colleague:

Frank Cameron

Frank Cameron is a Canadian writer. His book, I Owe It All to Rock & Roll, a memoir, was published by Pottersfield Press. Cameron takes the reader through different stages of his life, such as aspects of his childhood, falling in love with radio and television, and into his busy-as-ever retirement.

colleague:

Steven Laffoley

Steven Laffoley is an award-winning Canadian author of narrative nonfiction and fiction.

colleague:

Anthony Sherwood

Anthony Sherwood is a Canadian actor and writer.

colleague:

Thomas Head Raddall

Thomas Raddall is an English-Canadian novelist, who accurately depicted the history, manners, and idiom of Nova Scotians.

colleague:

Claire Angel Mowat

Claire Mowat is a Canadian writer and environmentalist.

colleague:

Harold Andrew Horwood

Harold Horwood was a Newfoundland and Labrador novelist, writer, and politician. He was a Member of the Order of Canada.

colleague:

Daniel Mannix Petrie

Daniel Petrie was a Canadian writer, filmmaker, and host.

colleague:

Sheree Fitch

Sheree Fitch is a Canadian author and literacy advocate.

colleague:

Budge Wilson

Budge Wilson is a Canadian writer highly acclaimed for her young adult books.

colleague:

William Patrick Kinsella

William Patrick Kinsella was a Canadian novelist and short-story writer.

colleague:

Ken McGoogan

Ken McGoogan is a globe-trotting Canadian writer who survived a shipwreck in the Indian Ocean, chased the ghost of Lady Franklin from Russell Square to Van.

colleague:

Wayne Curtis

Wayne Curtis started writing prose in the late 1960s. Books In Canada described his work as "A pleasure to read, for no detail escapes his discerning eye." In the spring of 2005, Wayne received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from St Thomas University.

colleague:

Doug Barron

Doug Barron (also as Hal Harbour) is a Canadian musician. He is a member of the Surf Poets.

Friend:

Stan Carew

Stan Carew was a Canadian radio broadcaster, musician, and actor.

Friend:

Neil Peart

Neil Peart was a Canadian musician and author.

Friend:

Malcolm Mackenzie Ross

Malcolm Ross was a Canadian literary critic.

References

• Lesley Choyce - Facebook
• Lesley Choyce (@LesleyChoyce) - Twitter
• Lesley Choyce - Official website