W. P. Kinsella
Encyclopedia
William Patrick Kinsella, OC
, OBC
(born May 25, 1935) is a Canadian novelist
and short story writer who is well-known for his novel Shoeless Joe (1982), which was adapted into the movie Field of Dreams
in 1989. His work has often concerned baseball
, First Nations
people, and other Canadian issues.
parents John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton
, Alberta
. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years old at a homestead
near Darwell, Alberta
, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
He did not go to school until the fifth grade, and did not attend university until he was in his mid-30s. Kinsella was not exposed to literature in school, claiming in a 2010 interview, "One Shakespeare play and one J. M. Barrie play was the total literature of my high school years."
Kinsella's literary education in his formative years came from reading and by attending all the plays at high school and any theatrical productions that made it to Edmonton. He also worked in the school library his senior year.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau
. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia
, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA
contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria
in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop
at the University of Iowa
in 1978. Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary
.
. Kinsella's first published book was called Dance Me Outside
(1977), which was a collection of seventeen short stories about the lives of people on a First Nations reserve
in his native Alberta. Kinsella was criticized for writing from the point-of-view of Native people, appropriating their voice. Kinsella rejected the criticism on the grounds that a writer has the license to create anything they so chose.
These stories use the ineptness of the white bureaucrats on reservations as background, and Kinsella defended them, saying, "It's the oppressed and the oppressor that I write about. The way that oppressed people survive is by making fun of the people who oppress them. That is essentially what my Indian stories are all about."
In the field of baseball, Kinsella has written nearly 40 short stories and three novels. Shoeless Joe (1982), his first novel, blends fantasy and magical realism to tell the story of a poor Iowa farmer who, yielding to voices in his head, builds a baseball field in his corn field that attracts the spirits of the 1919 Chicago White Sox
. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (1986), another book blending fantasy and magical realism, recounts an epic baseball game a minor league team played against the 1908 World's Champion Chicago Cubs
. Box Socials (1991), an evocation of life in rural Alberta during the Great Depression
and World War II
, features a growing boy as its protagonist and the adventure of a hometown baseball hero who gets to bat against the great pitcher legend Bob Feller
.
Shoeless Joe remains Kinsella's most famous work. The book was mildly controversial in that it used a living person, the reclusive author J.D. Salinger, as one of its main characters. Kinsella, who had never met him, created a wholly imagined character (aside from his being a recluse) based on the author of The Catcher in the Rye
, a book that had great meaning to him when he was a young man. To get a feel for Salinger, he re-read his body or work.
"I made sure to make him a nice character so that he couldn’t sue me."
In an example of metafiction
, he named his protagonist in Shoeless Joe "Ray Kinsella", a character from Salinger’s uncollected story “A Young Girl in 1941 with No Waist at All
.” Salinger had also used the surname shared by writer and protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye (Holden Caulfield
's friend Richard Kinsella).
Known for his litigiousness, Salinger contacted Kinsella's publisher via his attorneys to express outrage over having been portrayed in Shoeless Joe. Kinsella denied that Salinger, as a writer, had any real influence on his own writing, despite rumors to the contrary. (Some rumors held that Kinsella had actually met Salinger in person.)
Shoeless Joe won Kinsella the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship and the Books in Canada First Novel Award
in 1982. The book garnered good reviews, sold very well, and was made into a popular movie.
, starring Kevin Costner
. The movie grossed nearly $65 million in the United States, and helped establish Costner as a star. It also helped cement Kinsella's reputation as one of the leading scribes of baseball.
Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on reserves were the basis for the 1994 movie Dance Me Outside
and CBC
television series The Rez
, both of which Kinsella considers to be of very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour
in 1987. The short story The Last Pennant Before Armageddon was adapted for the stage by the Live Bait Theater in Chicago
in 1990.
A short story by Kinsella, "Lieberman in Love
", was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film
in 1996. The Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti
in her acceptance speech
. A full-page advertisement was placed in Variety
apologizing to Kinsella for the error.
In a 1999 interview with the University of Regina
's student newspaper, Kinsella explained that he could no longer write as he lost his ability to concentrate. The injury also robbed him of his senses of taste and smell. Kinsella said he went from being a Type A Personality
to Type B. After the accident, he didn't feel like doing the things he had done in his normal routine and didn't care. He did write book reviews to keep his name before the public.
Kinsella's exiting of fiction also may have economic roots. He was cited as an archetypical victim of changes in the publishing industry during the late 1980s, which accelerated during the 1990s, that made it more difficult for well-regarded "mid-list" writers such as Kinsella to remain in print. Changes to the U.S. tax code affected by the Tax Reform Act of 1986
discouraged publishers from maintaining inventories of titles in their back lists, as they were taxed on warehoused books. This led to the thinning out of back lists and the more rapid remaindering of books. The publishing industry underwent a wave of consolidation in the 1990s, as publishers were acquired by big communications companies seeking marketing synergies. The new publishing houses poured more capital into higher-paid, best-selling writers and celebrities who could guarantee "hit" books. Mid-list writers with first-rate reputations but mid-range, non-spectacular sales suffered accordingly as they were ignored by the newly publishing conglomerates.
Commenting about the state of the book industry in a 2010 interview with Macleans Magazine, Kinsella said, "The publishing industry today is just—I couldn’t break into the market today if I was just starting out. The publishing industry is down to a few dozen mainly adventure and romance writers. There’s still some academic fiction out there, but it has an incredibly small audience. Nobody really cares about it."
A noted tournament Scrabble
player, Kinsella became more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. He lives in Yale
, British Columbia
, with his fourth wife, Barbara, and occasionally writes articles for various newspapers.
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...
, OBC
Order of British Columbia
The Order of British Columbia is a civilian honour for merit in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Instituted in 1989 by Lieutenant Governor David Lam, on the advice of the Cabinet under Premier Bill Vander Zalm, the order is administered by the Governor-in-Council and is intended to honour...
(born May 25, 1935) is a Canadian novelist
Canadian literature
Canadian literature is literature originating from Canada. Collectively it is often called CanLit. Some criticism of Canadian literature has focused on nationalistic and regional themes, although this is only a small portion of Canadian Literary criticism...
and short story writer who is well-known for his novel Shoeless Joe (1982), which was adapted into the movie Field of Dreams
Field of Dreams
Field of Dreams is a 1989 American fantasy-drama film directed by Phil Alden Robinson and is from the novel Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella...
in 1989. His work has often concerned baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
, First Nations
First Nations
First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...
people, and other Canadian issues.
Early Life
William Patrick Kinsella was born to Irish AmericanIrish American
Irish Americans are citizens of the United States who can trace their ancestry to Ireland. A total of 36,278,332 Americans—estimated at 11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau...
parents John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton
Edmonton
Edmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta and is the province's second-largest city. Edmonton is located on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Capital Region, which is surrounded by the central region of the province.The city and its census...
, Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years old at a homestead
Homestead (buildings)
A homestead is either a single building, or collection of buildings grouped together on a large agricultural holding, such as a ranch, station or a large agricultural operation of some other designation.-See also:* Farm house* Homestead Act...
near Darwell, Alberta
Darwell, Alberta
Darwell is an unincorporated community in central Alberta in Lac Ste. Anne County, located north of Highway 16, northwest of Edmonton....
, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.
He did not go to school until the fifth grade, and did not attend university until he was in his mid-30s. Kinsella was not exposed to literature in school, claiming in a 2010 interview, "One Shakespeare play and one J. M. Barrie play was the total literature of my high school years."
Kinsella's literary education in his formative years came from reading and by attending all the plays at high school and any theatrical productions that made it to Edmonton. He also worked in the school library his senior year.
As an adult, he held a variety of jobs in Edmonton, including as a clerk for the government of Alberta and managing a credit bureau
Credit bureau
A credit bureau , or credit reference agency is a company that collects information from various sources and provides consumer credit information on individual consumers for a variety of uses. It is an organization providing information on individuals' borrowing and bill paying habits...
. In 1967, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
, running a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village and driving a taxi.
Though he had been writing since he was a child (winning a YMCA
YMCA
The Young Men's Christian Association is a worldwide organization of more than 45 million members from 125 national federations affiliated through the World Alliance of YMCAs...
contest at age 14), he began taking writing courses at the University of Victoria
University of Victoria
The University of Victoria, often referred to as UVic, is the second oldest public research university in British Columbia, Canada. It is a research intensive university located in Saanich and Oak Bay, about northeast of downtown Victoria. The University's annual enrollment is about 20,000 students...
in 1970, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing there in 1974. He earned a Master of Fine Arts in English degree through the Iowa Writers' Workshop
Iowa Writers' Workshop
The Program in Creative Writing, more commonly known as the Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, is a highly regarded graduate-level creative writing program in the United States...
at the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
in 1978. Before becoming a professional author, he was a professor of English at the University of Calgary
University of Calgary
The University of Calgary is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1966 the U of C is composed of 14 faculties and more than 85 research institutes and centres.More than 25,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students are currently...
.
Literary Life
According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, W.P. Kinsella's literary output primarily consists of two cycles of work dealing with two fictive universes: those dealing with baseball and those depicting the indigenous people of CanadaFirst Nations
First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...
. Kinsella's first published book was called Dance Me Outside
Dance Me Outside (book)
Dance Me Outside is a collection of short stories written by W. P. Kinsella in 1977.The book contains seventeen stories narrated by Silas Ermineskin and is set on a Cree Indian reserve in Central Alberta and is about what happens in the lives of the people that live on the reserve.-Film and...
(1977), which was a collection of seventeen short stories about the lives of people on a First Nations reserve
Indian reserve
In Canada, an Indian reserve is specified by the Indian Act as a "tract of land, the legal title to which is vested in Her Majesty, that has been set apart by Her Majesty for the use and benefit of a band." The Act also specifies that land reserved for the use and benefit of a band which is not...
in his native Alberta. Kinsella was criticized for writing from the point-of-view of Native people, appropriating their voice. Kinsella rejected the criticism on the grounds that a writer has the license to create anything they so chose.
These stories use the ineptness of the white bureaucrats on reservations as background, and Kinsella defended them, saying, "It's the oppressed and the oppressor that I write about. The way that oppressed people survive is by making fun of the people who oppress them. That is essentially what my Indian stories are all about."
In the field of baseball, Kinsella has written nearly 40 short stories and three novels. Shoeless Joe (1982), his first novel, blends fantasy and magical realism to tell the story of a poor Iowa farmer who, yielding to voices in his head, builds a baseball field in his corn field that attracts the spirits of the 1919 Chicago White Sox
Black Sox Scandal
The Black Sox Scandal took place around and during the play of the American baseball 1919 World Series. Eight members of the Chicago White Sox were banned for life from baseball for intentionally losing games, which allowed the Cincinnati Reds to win the World Series...
. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (1986), another book blending fantasy and magical realism, recounts an epic baseball game a minor league team played against the 1908 World's Champion Chicago Cubs
1908 World Series
The 1908 World Series matched the defending champion Chicago Cubs against the Detroit Tigers in a rematch of the 1907 Series. In this first-ever rematch of this young event, the Cubs won in five games for their second consecutive title....
. Box Socials (1991), an evocation of life in rural Alberta during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, features a growing boy as its protagonist and the adventure of a hometown baseball hero who gets to bat against the great pitcher legend Bob Feller
Bob Feller
On December 8, 1941, Feller enlisted in the Navy, volunteering immediately for combat service, becoming the first Major League Baseball player to do so following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7. Feller served as Gun Captain aboard the USS Alabama, and missed four seasons during his service...
.
Shoeless Joe remains Kinsella's most famous work. The book was mildly controversial in that it used a living person, the reclusive author J.D. Salinger, as one of its main characters. Kinsella, who had never met him, created a wholly imagined character (aside from his being a recluse) based on the author of The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage confusion, angst, alienation, language, and rebellion. It has been translated into almost all of the world's major...
, a book that had great meaning to him when he was a young man. To get a feel for Salinger, he re-read his body or work.
"I made sure to make him a nice character so that he couldn’t sue me."
In an example of metafiction
Metafiction
Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
, he named his protagonist in Shoeless Joe "Ray Kinsella", a character from Salinger’s uncollected story “A Young Girl in 1941 with No Waist at All
A Young Girl in 1941 with No Waist at All
"A Young Girl in 1941 with No Waist at All" is a short story by J. D. Salinger, published in Mademoiselle in May 1947. The story has not been published in any anthology...
.” Salinger had also used the surname shared by writer and protagonist in The Catcher in the Rye (Holden Caulfield
Holden Caulfield
Holden Caulfield is the 16-to-17 years old protagonist of author J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. He is universally recognized for his resistance to growing older and desire to protect childhood innocence...
's friend Richard Kinsella).
Known for his litigiousness, Salinger contacted Kinsella's publisher via his attorneys to express outrage over having been portrayed in Shoeless Joe. Kinsella denied that Salinger, as a writer, had any real influence on his own writing, despite rumors to the contrary. (Some rumors held that Kinsella had actually met Salinger in person.)
Shoeless Joe won Kinsella the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship and the Books in Canada First Novel Award
Books in Canada First Novel Award
The Amazon.ca First Novel Award, formerly the Books in Canada First Novel Award, is a literary award given annually to the best first novel in English published the previous year by a citizen or resident of Canada. It has been awarded since 1976....
in 1982. The book garnered good reviews, sold very well, and was made into a popular movie.
Adaptations
W.P. Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe was made into the movie Field of DreamsField of Dreams
Field of Dreams is a 1989 American fantasy-drama film directed by Phil Alden Robinson and is from the novel Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella...
, starring Kevin Costner
Kevin Costner
Kevin Michael Costner is an American actor, singer, musician, producer, director, and businessman. He has been nominated for three BAFTA Awards, won two Academy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Costner's roles include Lt. John J...
. The movie grossed nearly $65 million in the United States, and helped establish Costner as a star. It also helped cement Kinsella's reputation as one of the leading scribes of baseball.
Kinsella's eight books of short stories about life on reserves were the basis for the 1994 movie Dance Me Outside
Dance Me Outside
Dance Me Outside is a 1995 drama film directed and co-written by Bruce McDonald. It was based on a book by W.P. Kinsella,-Plot:Set on the Kidabanesee reserve in Northern Ontario. Silas Crow is a young man confused about his direction in life; he wants to take an automobile mechanic's course in...
and CBC
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly known as CBC and officially as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian crown corporation that serves as the national public radio and television broadcaster...
television series The Rez
The Rez
The Rez was a first nations, Canadian television series, which aired on CBC Television from 1996 to 1998. Most of the characters were based on W.P...
, both of which Kinsella considers to be of very poor quality. The collection Fencepost Chronicles won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour
Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour
The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour is an annual literary award presented to the best work of humorous literature in English by a Canadian writer. The award is a tribute to well-known Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock , and is accompanied by a cash prize of $15,000...
in 1987. The short story The Last Pennant Before Armageddon was adapted for the stage by the Live Bait Theater in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in 1990.
A short story by Kinsella, "Lieberman in Love
Lieberman in Love
Lieberman in Love is a 1995 short film directed by Christine Lahti. It won an Academy Award in 1996 for Best Short Subject.A short story by W.P. Kinsella, "Lieberman in Love", was the basis for the film. The Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had...
", was the basis for a short film that won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film
Academy Award for Live Action Short Film
This name for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film was introduced in 1974. For the three preceding years it was known as "Short Subjects, Live Action Films." The term "Short Subjects, Live Action Subjects" was used from 1957 until 1970. From 1936 until 1956 there were two separate...
in 1996. The Oscar win came as a surprise to the author, who, watching the award telecast from home, had no idea the film had been made and released. He had not been listed in the film's credits, and was not acknowledged by director Christine Lahti
Christine Lahti
Christine Lahti is an American actress and film director. Lahti has had a successful career in television and film. Throughout her career she has garnered 2 Golden Globe Awards from 8 Nominations, An Emmy Award from 6 Nominations and 2 Academy Award nominations...
in her acceptance speech
Acceptance Speech
Acceptance Speech is the six studio album of South African Hip Hop artist Hip Hop Pantsula, released under the CCP/EMI S.A. label in November 2008 in South Africa.-Track listing:...
. A full-page advertisement was placed in Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
apologizing to Kinsella for the error.
Life After Fiction
W.P. Kinsella was involved in a car accident in 1997 which resulted in the end of his fiction writing career. He was struck by a car while out walking and suffered a head injury when he hit the ground.In a 1999 interview with the University of Regina
University of Regina
The University of Regina is a public research university located in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Founded in 1911 as a private denominational high school of the Methodist Church of Canada, it began an association with the University of Saskatchewan as a junior college in 1925, and was disaffiliated...
's student newspaper, Kinsella explained that he could no longer write as he lost his ability to concentrate. The injury also robbed him of his senses of taste and smell. Kinsella said he went from being a Type A Personality
Type A personality
Originally published in the 1950s, the Type A and Type B personality theory is a theory which describes two common, contrasting personality types—the high-strung Type A and the easy-going Type B—as patterns of behavior that could either raise or lower, respectively, one's chances of developing...
to Type B. After the accident, he didn't feel like doing the things he had done in his normal routine and didn't care. He did write book reviews to keep his name before the public.
Kinsella's exiting of fiction also may have economic roots. He was cited as an archetypical victim of changes in the publishing industry during the late 1980s, which accelerated during the 1990s, that made it more difficult for well-regarded "mid-list" writers such as Kinsella to remain in print. Changes to the U.S. tax code affected by the Tax Reform Act of 1986
Tax Reform Act of 1986
The U.S. Congress passed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 to simplify the income tax code, broaden the tax base and eliminate many tax shelters and other preferences...
discouraged publishers from maintaining inventories of titles in their back lists, as they were taxed on warehoused books. This led to the thinning out of back lists and the more rapid remaindering of books. The publishing industry underwent a wave of consolidation in the 1990s, as publishers were acquired by big communications companies seeking marketing synergies. The new publishing houses poured more capital into higher-paid, best-selling writers and celebrities who could guarantee "hit" books. Mid-list writers with first-rate reputations but mid-range, non-spectacular sales suffered accordingly as they were ignored by the newly publishing conglomerates.
Commenting about the state of the book industry in a 2010 interview with Macleans Magazine, Kinsella said, "The publishing industry today is just—I couldn’t break into the market today if I was just starting out. The publishing industry is down to a few dozen mainly adventure and romance writers. There’s still some academic fiction out there, but it has an incredibly small audience. Nobody really cares about it."
A noted tournament Scrabble
Scrabble
Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a game board marked with a 15-by-15 grid. The words are formed across and down in crossword fashion and must appear in a standard dictionary. Official reference works provide a list...
player, Kinsella became more involved with the game after being disillusioned by the 1994 Major League Baseball strike. He lives in Yale
Yale, British Columbia
Yale is an unincorporated town in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It was founded in 1848 by the Hudson's Bay Company as Fort Yale by Ovid Allard, the appointed manager of the new post, who named it after his superior, James Murray Yale, then Chief Factor of the Columbia District...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, with his fourth wife, Barbara, and occasionally writes articles for various newspapers.
Honors
- In 1991, Kinsella was presented with an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from the University of Victoria.
- In 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of CanadaOrder of CanadaThe Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...
. - In 2005, he was awarded the Order of British ColumbiaOrder of British ColumbiaThe Order of British Columbia is a civilian honour for merit in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Instituted in 1989 by Lieutenant Governor David Lam, on the advice of the Cabinet under Premier Bill Vander Zalm, the order is administered by the Governor-in-Council and is intended to honour...
. - In 2009, he was awarded the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. Vancouver Public LibraryVancouver Public LibraryThe Vancouver Public Library is the third largest public library system in Canada, with more than 2.5 million items in its collections, 22 branches, approximately 375,000 cardholders, and nearly nine million item borrowings annually...
and Pacific Book World News Society jointly sponsor and present the annual prize to a British Columbia author for an enduring contribution to the literary arts. "I think a lifetime achievement award sounds pretty final, but I'm always happy to see my work recognized," Kinsella said.
Novels
- Shoeless Joe (1982, winner of the 1982 Books in Canada First Novel AwardBooks in Canada First Novel AwardThe Amazon.ca First Novel Award, formerly the Books in Canada First Novel Award, is a literary award given annually to the best first novel in English published the previous year by a citizen or resident of Canada. It has been awarded since 1976....
and the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship) - The Iowa Baseball ConfederacyThe Iowa Baseball ConfederacyThe Iowa Baseball Confederacy is a novel written by W. P. Kinsella and was published in 1986.-References:*Kinsella, W. P. . The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. New York: ISBN 0-395-38952-6...
(1986) - Box Socials (1991)
- The Winter Helen Dropped By (1994)
- If Wishes Were Horses (1996)
- Magic Time (1998)
Short story collections
- Dance Me OutsideDance Me Outside (book)Dance Me Outside is a collection of short stories written by W. P. Kinsella in 1977.The book contains seventeen stories narrated by Silas Ermineskin and is set on a Cree Indian reserve in Central Alberta and is about what happens in the lives of the people that live on the reserve.-Film and...
, (1977, short stories) - Scars, (1978, short stories)
- Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes To Iowa, (1980, short stories)
- Born Indian, (1981, short stories)
- Moccasin Telegraph, (1983, short stories)
- The Thrill of the Grass, (1984, short stories)
- The Last Pennant Before Armageddon, (1984, short stories)
- Five Stories, (1985, short stories)
- The Alligator ReportThe Alligator ReportThe Alligator Report is a collection of short stories written by W. P. Kinsella and was published in 1985.The Alligator Report contains 26 short stories written by W. P. Kinsella and is 134 pages long...
, (1985, short stories) - The Fencepost Chronicles, (1986, short stories, winner of the 1987 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for HumourStephen Leacock Memorial Medal for HumourThe Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour is an annual literary award presented to the best work of humorous literature in English by a Canadian writer. The award is a tribute to well-known Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock , and is accompanied by a cash prize of $15,000...
) - Red Wolf, Red Wolf, (1987, short stories)
- The Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt, (1988, short stories)
- The Miss Hobbema Pageant, (1989, short stories)
- The Dixon Cornbelt League and Other Baseball StoriesThe Dixon Cornbelt League and Other Baseball StoriesThe Dixon Cornbelt League and Other Baseball Stories is a short story collection written by W. P. Kinsella. It was published in 1993.-Synopsis:...
, (1993, short stories) - Brother Frank's Gospel Hour, (1994, short stories)
- The Secret of the Northern Lights, (1998, short stories)
- Baseball Fantastic, (2000, short stories)
- Japanese BaseballJapanese baseballNippon Professional Baseball or NPB is the highest level of baseball in Japan. Locally, it is often called , meaning Professional Baseball. Outside of Japan, it is often just referred to as "Japanese baseball." The roots of the league can be traced back to the formation of the in 1934 and the...
and Other Stories, (2000, short stories)
External links
- W. P. Kinsella's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
- An annotated bibliography of his writings on baseball
- Article on Kinsella's 1997 accident
- Notable Writers among Iowa Alumni
- Kinsella gives award money to his Alma Mater
- Waiting on Lombard Street (June 15, 2008), Asian Girl (October 2, 2008); short stories in SmokeLong Quarterly