Shoeless Joe

Shoeless Joe
W.P. Kinsella

William Patrick Kinsella was born may 25, 1935 in Edmonton, Alberta. His father

was a contractor and his mother was a printer. As an only child, Kinsella spent his early

years in a log cabin near Lac Ste.-Anne, sixty miles northwest of Edmonton. He rarely

saw other children and completed grades one through four by correspondence.   " Having

no contact with children, I considered myself a small adult" (Authors and writers for

young adults, 130-131).   His parents, grandmother, and aunt read to each other and told

stories, Kinsella began writing fantasies when he was five or six; mostly baseball

fantasies. Why did Kinsella like to write about baseball so much?

The family moved to Edmonton when he was ten, and his father, a former

Semi pro baseball player began taking him to baseball games. In eighth grade, Kinsella

won a prize for "Diamond Doom," a baseball mystery. At age eighteen, he published his

first story, a science fiction tale about a totalitarian society, in the Alberta Civil Service

Bulletin.

Kinsella worked as a government clerk, manager of a retail credit company,

account executive for the City of Edmonton, owner of a n Italian restaurant, and taxicab

driver while attending the University of Victoria where he received a B.A. in 1974.   Then

he attended a writer's workshop at the University of Iowa, earning a master of fine arts

degree in 1978. He taught at the University of Calgary from 1978 to 1983. But he hated

the academic life so he quit to write full time. Kinsella was married to Mildred Clay from

1965 to 1978. He married the writer Ann Knight in 1978 and they settled in White Rock,

British Columbia and Iowa City, Iowa when not traveling to attend major league baseball

games. Kinsella has two daughters, Shannon and Erin.

In 1982 Kinsella wrote a best selling novel, "Shoeless Joe". "Kinsellas 1982

mythical baseball fable drew on the... [continues]

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