He was natural around North Battleford, Saskatchewan. Whilst he was x his personal moved to the domestic around Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. When completing senior high, MacLeod attended teacher's college within Truro and so taught school. He exposed at St. Francis Xavier University between 1957 and 1960 and graduated with a BA and B.Ed. He so went inside to receive his MA in 1961 from either a University of New Brunswick and his PhD in 1968 from either a University of Notre Dame.

The specialist within British literature of a nineteenth century, MacLeod taught English for three years at the Indiana University before accepting a post around 1969 at a University of Windsor as professor of English & originative writing. He & his personal go to to Cape Breton each summerperiod, even so, in which he lives a share of his time "writing in a cliff-top cabin looking west towards Prince Edward Island."

MacLeod's writing career has been quite remarkable within earning him a great critical reputation on the basis of simply xiv short stories, collected in The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories (1986).

Within 1999, he published his first novel, No Great Mischief, which follows the lasts of many generations of the personal that emigrates from either Scotland to Cape Breton Island, the setting of numerous of MacLeod's short stories. Written all over a course of xiii years, There is no Nifty Mischief was published to groovy critical eclat & has been translated into the total of different languages. Nominative for completely of Canada's major literary awards, a novel was awarded a Trillium Award, the Thomas Head Raddall Award, the Dartmouth Book & Writing Award for Fiction, the Atlantic Provinces Booksellers Choice Award, and the 2001 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Completely of his promulgated short stories, + of these recently piece, were collected inside Island, published in 2000.

His works come considered among a super right Canada has produced in the twentieth century.