He is the author of the award-winning (the Trillium Book Award) novel The Jade Peony (1995), and the also award-winning (Edna Staebler Creative Non-Fiction Award) Paper Shadows: a Chinatown Childhood (1999), which was also nominated for a Governor General's Award.
Choy studied creative writing at the University of British Columbia. He now teaches at Toronto's Humber College and the Humber School for Writers. He has been President of Cahoots Theatre Company of Toronto since 1999.