W. P. (Bill) Kinsella, one of the University of Victoria’s most prestigious graduates of the undergraduate writing program, died on Sept. 16 at the age of 81 in Hope, B.C.
Kinsella was a prolific writer in the fields of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. He produced nearly thirty works during his lifetime, including Shoeless Joe, a 1982 novel about a farmer who builds a baseball field at the command of a disembodied baseball announcer’s voice. The novel was later adapted into the 1989 film Field of Dreams.
Kinsella was the recipient of several honours and awards during his life, including the Order of B.C., the Order of Canada, the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Leacock Medal for Humour.
“He was a dedicated storyteller, performer, curmudgeon, an irascible and difficult man,” said his literary agent Carolyn Swayze in a statement. “His fiction has made people laugh, cry, and think for decades and will do so for decades to come. Not a week has passed in the last 22 years, without receiving a note of appreciation for Bill’s stories. His contribution … will endure.”
Literary success and a fascination with baseball came early in Kinsella’s life. When he was 14, he won a YMCA writing contest with Diamond Doom, a short story about a murder weapon buried beneath a baseball stadium’s turf field. His father, a plastering contractor, played minor league baseball, but Kinsella himself never played until his family moved from their home on a farm near Darwell, west of Edmonton, to Edmonton itself when he was 10.
In 1974, Kinsella earned a bachelor of arts in creative writing at UVic at the age of 39. At the recommendation of his professor, W.D. (Bill) Valgardson, he attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa and earned his master’s degree in English. He later accepted a teaching job in the English department at the University of Calgary.
Kinsella’s rate of publication slowed significantly in 1997. While walking down the sidewalk, he was struck by a car backing out of a driveway and sustained a head injury. Parts of Kinsella’s personality seemed to be altered as a result: primarily, those parts which were motivated to be creative. Kinsella didn’t publish anything until 2011, when his novel Butterfly Winter came out. It had been in progress for twenty-seven years.
In one of his final emails to his biographer Willie Steele, Kinsella said, “I’m a storyteller, in that my greatest satisfaction comes from making people laugh and also leaving them with a tear in the corner of their eye.”
Kinsella’s final published work will be Russian Dolls, which is set to be released in 2017. Kinsella is survived by two daughters, three stepchildren, and several grandchildren.
Source 1