Photo: Theodora Ofosuhima

Featured guest W. P. Kinsella garnered a lot of attention at The Word on the Street: Saskatoon Book and Magazine Festival.

In front of a large and excited crowd, Kinsella was interviewed by LIFE OF PI author Yann Martel.

Photo: Theodora Ofosuhima

Writer and illustrator Karin Melberg Schwier included W. P. Kinsella’s reading among her favorite moments of the festival. 

Photo: Pat Covello

Prior to the event, THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT asked Kinsella about the book that changed his life.

Mine would be Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man.

I stumbled on a copy while in high school, about 1952, and it suddenly validated my ambitions. I had known from about age six that I wanted to be a writer, but at Eastwood High School in Edmonton we studied one Shakespeare play, a J.M. Barrie play, and a book of dull essays. No fiction. And what I could find at the library generally failed to excite me, though I loved Hemingway’s Across the River and Into the Trees.

The Illustrated Man showed such imagination, and the figurative language stunned me. I said, “This is what I want to do with my life.”

For more info about THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty

Cover design by Elizabeth Story