Author, poet, publisher, professor, surfer, and – for the last 8 years – Celtic Life International contributor, Lesley Choyce is a man for all seasons and reasons. Recently we spoke with the scribe about his past, present and future, and his passion for his profession.

What are your own family roots?
The Choyces came to the New World from Leicestershire, U.K. – my best guess is from around the tiny village of Sibson, where Dick Turpin once hid out in a pub owned by the local church. They settled in New Jersey and Pennsylvania from whence I eventually, generations later, escaped over the border to Canada when American insanity revealed itself fully to me. On my mother’s side, the Willis immigrants supposedly came from somewhere in England with Lord Baltimore who first attempted settlement in Newfoundland until he realized the winters were notably harsh. So, instead, his settlers ending up in Maryland, and my forefathers and mothers on that side of the family settled on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. And, of course, I now live on another Eastern Shore, in Nova Scotia.

When and why did you want to become a writer?
I thought this through in great detail in high school. The goal was to avoid work. Hey, just sit down and put some words on paper and you don’t have to get a real job. Fiction was the goal. Just make some stuff up and you’d get paid a lot of money. That was the dream. Then I wanted to do it all: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, kids book, movie scripts. All that was accomplished except the promised cash prize never materialized so I had to get real jobs to sustain the habit.

Are they the same reasons you continue to write today?
Today I write for the sheer joy of it, the challenge of keeping up with the times and the lofty, albeit perhaps foolhardy notion that I continue to have something of significant value to share with readers while still attempting to entertain.

What inspires you today?
Inspiration takes many forms: nature, ideas, loved ones, language itself. Inspiration itself in its myriad forms still sends me spiralling up into the misty sky. Inspiration also sometimes grabs me by the ankles and yanks me down to the surface of the planet. Travelling far and wide to discover how fascinating and odd humans are or sitting on my arse and asking the clouds to deliver wonderful ideas, inspiration is all around. The Atlantic Ocean, a stone’s throw away from my doorstep is still my great mentor and stimulus – always changing, always there, always charged with energy. Just staring out across it or sitting on my surfboard waiting for the next wave supercharges my creativity.

Who are your core literary influences?
Walt Whitman, Farley Mowat, William Wordsworth, Pat Conroy, Jules Torti, Bill Bryson, Jonathan Swift, Tony Hawks, Seamus Heaney, Alan Ginsberg, John Fowles, Alistair MacLeod, Billy Collins, Bob Dylan, Sun Tzu, and Trevor Noah.

Do you have a favourite writer?
Pat Conroy – American Southern fiction author

Do you have a favourite book?
The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy.

What are the challenges of the vocation?
Endless rejection. Changing publishing trends. Censorship in its many forms. Trying to continually learn and improve my craft.

What are the rewards?
The rewards of writing are embodied in the act of writing itself. Discovering what I have to say about the world and trying to get it down with words and getting it right – or close enough so that it connects with readers. Sometimes I get actual responses from people, but like most writers I know, we write a rough draft, fix it up, send it out there and never really get much feedback so we need to have faith in the value of writing itself.

What makes a good book?
A good book is one that in some way is original and the writer is reaching somewhere beyond the norm. Style is more important than content. Character is more important than plot. At its core, a really good novel expresses something about human nature that we know deep down but can’t quite understand or articulate until some amazing author puts it into a story. And, oh yeah, telling a good story probably supersedes all the rest and it results from the sum of all the parts, not just the parts themselves.

What makes a good story?
Riveting characters put in impossible situations where they must make impossible choices but have no… choice. That will make for a fine tale.

What is it about Atlantic Canadian writers that makes them, and their stories, so unique?
Well, I was called to live here by the Great Muse of the Atlantic. It was a siren call and a dangerous one where I might have foundered on the rocks. But, like others before me, born here or called from a great distance, we listened to the rhythm and melody of the vast oceanic song and found a way to slide into a comfortable symbiotic relationship with the danger and the beauty. While we can never quite explain this properly, we might just keep trying to borrow from that beauty, wonder, fragility and danger, tap into it and see if we can spin a tale or two worthy of its spirit.

From your perspective, are young people still reading?
People of all ages are starving for something more than just megatons of information. Young people are still trying to make sense of the world as I am. They just have more distractions. Wisdom is hiding more than ever behind a cloak of infinite details that consume our daily lives. Books, ebooks, blogs, movies – all have the same potential to allow us to dig deeper than the mundane and shallow diversions. Politically, right now at least, so little makes any real sense that survival of the species may depend on creators in every medium to shred the seductive, destructive distracting veneer of contemporary social and political culture so that we can all continue to be reminded of the good stuff that might just keep humanity moving forward rather than backwards.

What advice might you have for a younger person looking to have a career as a writer?
Start young. Keep your eye on the ball. Write often. Read massive amounts of everything worthy of your time. Write what you know. Write also about things you feel incapable of writing – push those limits. If you are feeling it, try to really speak for your generation. Find your audience, even if it is a small one. Write some more. Read some more. Fail. Fall. Get back up. Then find one small fragment of success. Build on it. Ignore bad advice – there is lots of it out there about writing, success and everything else – and keep on keepin’ on.

What’s on your agenda for the rest of 2025?
This past year, Linda and I have been chasing Atlantic islands with volcanoes – mostly dead ones, I admit. The pursuit has taken us to Iceland (with the real fire-breathing monsters), Madeira, Tenerife and Sao Miguel (Azores). I hope to continue finding new places to hike and explore, both nearby and far off with a special fondness for those dead volcanoes. Japan is on the shortlist. I look forward to the publication of my latest novel, In the Kingdom of Cheese, There are No Heroes, and completing a novel that has been in the works for four years titled Mistaken Serenity. I am still searching for a publisher for a travel memoir titled Two Sides of the Atlantic. I continue to teach Creative Writing at Dalhousie University where I have taught for over forty years. I also look forward to waking up beside my beautiful wife each morning and both of us continuing our commitment to be happy. So much uncertainty and insanity out there that each of us has to weave a protective blanket of our own sanity, compassion and happiness out of whatever raw material is at hand.

www.lesleychoyce.com
@lesleychoyce