Novelist • Conservationist • Investor
Arts Patron
Leigh Seippel’s Ruin, A Novel of Fly Fishing in Bankruptcy was a finalist for best first novel in the annual nationally juried competition of the Independent Publishers Association and is highly starred by voluntary Amazon reviewers. Ruin is based in part on the actual tale of Leigh’s acquaintances. But as an author he envisioned the colorful journeys of its characters having himself walked some of their paths.
The Hudson Valley Years
Time Farm is the decrepit Hudson Valley farmstead where the novel’s protagonists Frank and Francy flee financial disaster common in America. That new setting in their complete exile from high life in Manhattan is a poignant character in itself. Similarly to the old farmstead at which Leigh has long lived. His country life brought flocks of sheep and goats, laying hens so privileged their big coop became known as Poultry Palace, a vineyard and winery, an apiary and a self-sustaining vegetable garden. All amid restored Nineteenth Century masonry barns. Much of this extensive farming work was by Leigh’s own hands with his wife.
Manhattan Life
But unlike Ruin’s very unlucky Frank and Francy Campbell, Leigh’s alternative real life in Manhattan remains belovedly in place. In his career Leigh progressed from finance attorney to co-founding a large private equity firm to venture capital investing. He is now a founding investor in a cybersecurity company and a pharmaceutical drug project with a leading research hospital. That professional work took him for periods to West Texas, the Deep South and London. Portrayals in Ruin draw upon those other experiences.
The Novelist
Leigh’s career then progressed to dedicated creative fiction writing.
Ruin was followed by The Which of Shakespeare’s Why, also highly ranked by many Amazon reviewers. The Which draws accurate Elizabethan history into a modern theater comedy about the important Shakespeare authorship debate. It is published under the pen name Leigh Light.
His third novel Catching Izaac Walton is pending publication. Catching carries succinctly curated startling aspects of the Seventeenth Century English Civil War into a modern tale of troubled romance amid murder investigation.
Leigh is now completing Stone Blood, bringing alive accurate scholarship of the intensely vivid ancient Maya world. As experienced through a modern thriller set in Guatemala.
The Conservationist
Leigh’s love of nature led to his service with financial support on the boards of two of the largest American land and water conservancies, Scenic Hudson and Trout Unlimited. He is also a leader of conservation work of The Anglers’ Club of New York, of which he served as president. Leigh is an active member of other old New York social clubs.
The various colorfully dramatic fishing episodes within Ruin are all based to some extent on its author’s own adventures. Leigh has fly fished across the United States, Eastern Canada, nearly a dozen countries of Britain and Europe, Russia, Turkey, Mongolia, India, Mexico, Argentina, New Zealand, Belize, Guatemala and the Bahamas.
For a dozen years Leigh wrote and published The Royal Coachman, a commercially successful light-hearted journal of globe-trotting exploratory fly fishing. In pen name The Royal Coachman he wrote the introduction to a Simon & Schuster primer of how to fly fish. The Anglers’ Club has published two books featuring his writing. He has book reviewed for Trout Unlimited’s nationally subscribed magazine.
Patron of the Arts
Since 1995 he has been a lead trustee of Checkerboard Film Foundation, an award-winning documentary film producer. Checkerboard has archived dozens of living history interviews with preeminent American visual artists and architects. He also has been a dedicated supporter of the American Academy In Rome.
CONTACT
Leigh grew up near the Chesapeake Bay Maryland shore. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia Law School.
His contact address is leighseippel@aol.com.
