SOURCE: Kinsella, W. P., and Don Murray. “Prairie Indians and Peregrine Indians: An Interview with W. P. Kinsella.” Wascana Review 20, no. 1 (1985): 93-101.

In the following interview, Kinsella discusses his depictions of Canadian Indians, his use of humor, and the preliminary plans for the film adaptation of Shoeless Joe.

The writer W. P. Kinsella, who won a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship award and other prizes for his novel Shoeless Joe (1982), has written numerous volumes of short stories: Dance Me Outside (1977), Scars (1978), Born Indian (1981), Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa (1980), The Moccasin Telegraph and Other Stories (1983), and The Thrill of the Grass (1984). He is presently working on another book of short stories and a new novel.

Kinsella was born in 1935 in Edmonton, Alberta, and he spent his youth in the country near Lac Ste. Anne, west of Edmonton. After working at various jobs (claims investigator, cab driver, restauranteur), he took...