Story highlights Kinsella's final book will be published next year

"He was ... outrageously opinionated," his agent says

(CNN) Canadian author W.P. Kinsella, whose book inspired the film "Field of Dreams," has died. He was 81.

His agent Carolyn Swayze confirmed his death in a statement, but did not provide details on his health or when he died.

"He was a unique, creative and outrageously opinionated man," Swayze said. "He was a dedicated story-teller, performer, curmudgeon, an irascible and difficult man. His fiction has made people laugh, cry, and think for decades and will do so for decades to come."

Kinsella was born in Edmonton, Alberta, on May 25, 1935.

Swayze said Kinsella and his wife, Ann Knight, were her first friends when she moved to White Rock, British Columbia, in 1984. Kinsella persuaded her to become a literary agent in 1994 and to represent his work, she said.

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