Sunday, October 25, 2009

Seven Ravens: Two summers in a life by the sea BOOK LAUNCH PARTY

You are invited to the book launch party of


Seven Ravens: Two summers in a life by the sea
by Lesley Choyce

November 6, 2009 at 6 - 8pm. The Company House, 2202 Gottingen St., Halifax.


If Eat, Pray, Love had been written by a 50-year-old male surfer from Nova Scotia, it would be Lesley Choyce's Seven Ravens: Two summers in a life by the sea. While Choyce doesn't journey to Italy, India and Bali in search of emotional healing and spiritual growth (though he would probably be happy to do so), his book is also a journey of self-discovery. But instead of leaving everything behind and visiting exotic locales, Choyce takes his pen, his writer's ability to observe and some unexpected literary companions into the wilderness that surrounds his Lawrencetown Beach home to find healing.


Seven Ravens is filled with luminous descriptions of the natural beauties of Nova Scotia, humorous stories of saving orphaned animals with his daughter and moving accounts of Choyce's struggle with depression. There is no self-pity in this book, only honesty, love of nature and a willingness to work through problems in the most human way possible.

Seven Ravens: Two summers in a life by the sea is a book that readers will enjoy, and turn to again and again whenever they are bewildered by life
LESLEY CHOYCE is the author of 70 books for adults, teens and children. He has taught at Dalhousie University for the past 25 years and is the publisher of Pottersfield Press. Lesley surfs year-round in the North Atlantic and is considered the father of transcendental wood-splitting. He lives in a 200-year-old farmhouse at Lawrencetown Beach overlooking the ocean. He also hosts a nationally syndicated TV talk show on BookTelevision. His novel The Republic of Nothing is currently being developed as a feature-length movie.


"Choyce's writing reveals an engagement with both the physical world and the literary one. It is a privilege to be invited on a journey with such an inquisitive and sensitive mind." -Candace Fertile, Quill and Quire


WOLSAK AND WYNN PUBLISHERS LTD. Contact: Noelle Allen noelle.allen@wolsakandwynn.ca Tel: 905-972-9885

Media inquiries: Peggy Walt, pwalt@eastlink.ca, (902) 422-5403

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Nova Scotia: Visions of the Future


Edited by Lesley Choyce

Nonfiction: Nova Scotia, Energy, Politics, the Future

192 pages, $19.95, 6" x 9" Paperback

ISBN-13: 978-1-897426-07-4

Available in May 2009

Pottersfield Press || Chapters || Amazon

In the spring of 2009, Pottersfield will launch this most insightful book that may set in motion some serious action that can help Nova Scotia live up to its full future potential. The writing is personal, reflective, proactive and thoroughly captivating by more than 30 contributors from many diverse fields of expertise.

In the summer of 2008, Pottersfield publisher Lesley Choyce sent a letter to a select and varied list of Nova Scotians asking them to contribute to a book about this province's future. He invited some of the best minds (and hearts) around the province to present their vision of this possible province of the future. Absolutely anything goes.

Two things prompted this grandiose plan. First, Choyce became a grandfather in May. His daughter Pamela had a boy - Aidan, whose arrival made Choyce think about the world he will inherit and what he will see and experience in his lifetime. Second, while Choyce was away in Yellowknife in June, a forest fire nearly took his house. The flames were not exactly licking the door, but it was headed its way with a strong north wind and a lot of fuel in the form of forests ravaged by Hurricane Juan and clear-cutting. When he got home, he went hiking up into the charred land several times. Once the sadness wore off, he started thinking about renewal... and about the future.

That's when he decided to pull this book together. He invited many Nova Scotians to write anything they wanted to, hoping contriutors would cover environment, technology, immigration, social aspects, urban life, rural life, energy, politics, government, family, economics, forests, the ocean and much more. The bolder the vision, the better. Stories and personal aspects were okay. Controversial ideas were fine. Which future? Anything beyond ten years and up to a thousand.

Some of the contributing writers include Marq deVilliers, Peggy Hope-Simpson, Richard Zurawski, Premier Rodney MacDonald, Budge Wilson, Alan Wilson, Dr. Richard Goldbloom, Carol Bruneau, Tom Gallant, Geoff Regan, Sunyata Choyce, Neal Livingston, Barb Stegemann, Bill Carr, Bob Howse, Ralph Martin, and Stephen Clare among others.