Shoeless Joe is the story of a farmer who feels compelled to build a baseball diamond in his cornfield.
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“I read Ray Bradbury, and I said, ‘Oh, that’s what I want to do with my life.’ ” Bradbury later discovered Kinsella, and contacted him by email to thank him for writing Shoeless Joe. He didn’t work for about five years, and told people he was retired.
“I just think magically, I always have”, Kinsella said. Kinsella wrote more than 20 books, most famously Shoeless Joe. Key turns of phrases in his book -“If you build it, they will come” and “Go the distance” – have taken their place in literature’s lexicon. It became the blueprint for the 1989 Oscar-nominated movie, which starred Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones and Ray Liotta.
In 1994, Kinsella spoke with the CBC about the major league baseball strike. He published nearly 30 books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry and won the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest honors.
He was born outside Edmonton on May 25, 1935.
He began writing very early in life, winning a YMCA contest at the age of 14.
He earned his Bachelor of Arts in creative writing from the University of Victoria nearly, at the age of 40, and a Masters of Fine Arts in English from the University of Iowa in 1978. In 1978 he earned a master of fine arts in English through the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Before becoming a professional author, Kinsella was a professor of English at the University of Calgary.
Vancouver Writer’s Festival founder Alma Lee said Kinsella was a private man with a passion for baseball.
“He was a dedicated story teller, performer, curmudgeon and irascible and hard man”, her statement said. W.P. Kinsella not only accomplished that goal, he delivered a timeless masterpiece that could best be described as a literary home run.
However he did resume writing and his final work Russian Dolls is due to be released next year.
Among other works by W.P. Kinsella are Dance Me Outside, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, and If Wishes Were Horses.
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Kinsella requested there would be no memorial service following his death. AP material published by LongIsland.com, is done so with explicit permission.
