William Patrick Kinsella was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Kinsella always though of himself as a writer, although he wrote more than 50 stories before getting published. Kinsella grew up loving the game of baseball. He wrote his first baseball story, a murder mystery called Diamond Doom, when he was in the eight grade. Kinsella's first collection of baseball stories, Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa, was published in 1980. In 1982, Kinsella expanded the stories into the award-winning novel Shoeless Joe, in which an Iowa corn farmer builds a baseball diamond in his fields after he hears voices. When he does, the ghosts of former baseball greats including Chicago Black Sox Shoeless… Joe Jackson, come to play on the field. Shoeless Joe was eventually adapted and produced as the 1989 Hollywood movie Field of Dreams, featuring Kevin Costner and Ray Liotta. Other novels written by Kinsella include The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, The Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt, The Alligator Report, and The Miss Hobbema Pageant. Educated at the University of Victoria and the University of Iowa, Kinsella is a professor at the University of Calgary.