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William Roderick James (June 6, 1892 – September 3, 1942) was a Canadian-American artist and writer of the American West, known for writing Smoky the Cowhorse, for which he won the 1927 Newbery Medal. However, Will James was born Joseph Ernest Nephtali Dufault in St. Nazaire de Acton, Quebec, Canada.

As a youth he longed to become a cowboy, and in 1907, at the age of 15, he left home to live his dream in Western Canada. In 1910, he entered the United States with a new name: William Roderick James, claiming to be born in Montana—an alias he maintained the rest of his life. By 1914, he was working in Nevada, where he was arrested for rustling cattle and served 18 months in the Nevada State Prison at Carson City from 1915-16, taking care of the facility's horses.

After his release, he suffered a severe kick to the jaw while breaking wild horses and moved to California for dental work, joining the famous Clarence (Fat) Jones Stable late in 1916 and becoming a movie stuntman specializing in daring horse action. He served in the U.S. Army from 1918-19 and married Alice Conradt, a Reno native, on July 7, 1920.

His western drawings and short stories began to appear in national magazines, including Red Book, Saturday Evening Post, and Scribner's Magazine. He and his wife bought a small ranch in Washoe Valley, Nevada, where he wrote his most famous book, Smoky the Cowhorse, published in 1926. His fictionalized autobiography, Lone Cowboy, was written in 1930 and was a bestselling Book-of-the-Month Club selection.

In all, he wrote and illustrated 23 books, 5 of which were made into feature films. He wrote his last book, The American Cowboy, in 1942, shortly before his death, and the last line he wrote was "The cowboy will never die". He died on September 3, 1942 in Hollywood, California.