Known globally for his baseball-related fiction, including a novel that give rise to the Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams, W.P. Kinsella is equally well-known in Canada as the author of a string of comical "Indian stories" set on the Hobbema reserve, near to where he was raised in Alberta. Born on May 25, 1935, William Patrick Kinsella was an only child on a remote homestead near Darwell, 60 km. west of Edmonton, until his family moved to Edmonton when he was ten. Although the Hobbema reserve was nearby, Kinsella has claimed he had limited access to it and his stories about Cree Aboriginals are based on his imagination. In 1967, Kinsella moved to Victoria where he drove a taxi and operated a pizza restaurant called Caesar's Italian Village. After taking significant writing courses from W.D. Valgardson at the University of Victoria, he was stubbornly persistent in his efforts to making his living as a writer. Eventually he published Dance Me Outside in 1977, featuring the likeable Cree narrator Silas Ermineskin, himself a would-be writer, and his outrageous entrepreneurial sidekick Frank Fencepost. Superficially attacked as being racist, the Hobbema stories invariably feature his Aboriginal characters outwitting whites authorities. Kinsella flatly rejects criticism that he has demeaned Aboriginals by resorting to stereotypes. Dance Me Outside, the superb title story in his first collection, was made into a Canadian movie by director Bruce McDonald, but Kinsella abhors the result. "I gave him plot, geography and characters and he chose to ignore them," he says. The main characters have resurfaced in the TV series called The Rez. Kinsella has published ten books related to baseball and seven other books not related to the Hobbema reserve, including Two Spirits Soar, his appreciation of the life and work of Cree artist Allen Sapp.

SELECTED TITLES:

Kinsella, W.P. Dance Me Outside (Oberon, 1977).
Kinsella, W.P. Scars (Oberon, 1978).
Kinsella, W.P. Born Indian (Oberon, 1981).
Kinsella, W.P. The Moccasin Telegraph (Penguin, 1983).
Kinsella, W.P. The Fencepost Chronicles (Collins, 1986). Winner of the Leacock Kinsella, W.P. Medal for Humour, 1987).
Kinsella, W.P. The Miss Hobbema Pageant (Doubleday, 1989).
Kinsella, W.P. Two Spirits Soar: The Art of Allen Sapp, the Inspiration of Allan
Gonor (Don Mills, Ontario: Stoddart, 1990).
Kinsella, W.P. Brother Frank's Gospel Hour (HarperCollins, 1994).