Paul Zindel

Paul Zindel
Photo of Paul Zindel
Born	(1936-05-15)May 15, 1936 Tottenville, Staten Island, NY
Died	March 27, 2003(2003-03-27) (aged 66) New York City, USA
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	American
Spouse	Bonnie Hildebrand (1973-1998)
Information
Genre	Drama, novels, screenplays
Debut works	The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
Notable work(s)	The Pigman
Magnum opus	The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
Awards	Pulitzer Prize for Drama 1971 Margaret Edwards Award 2002

Paul Zindel, Jr. (May 15, 1936 – March 27, 2003) was an American playwright, young adult novelist, and educator.

Zindel was born in Tottenville, Staten Island, New York to Paul Zindel, Sr., a policeman, and Betty Zindel, a nurse; his sister, Betty (Zindel) Hagen, was a year and a half older than him. Paul Zindel, Sr. ran away with his mistress when Zindel was two, leaving the trio to move around Staten Island, living in various houses and apartments.

Zindel wrote his first play in high school. Throughout his teen years he wrote plays, though he trained as a chemist at Wagner College and spent six months working at Allied Chemical as a chemical writer after graduating. Zindel took a creative writing course with the playwright Edward Albee while he was an undergraduate. Albee became his mentor and was an advocate for Zindel. He later quit and worked as a high school Chemistry and Physics teacher at Tottenville High School on Staten Island for ten years.

In 1964, he wrote The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, his first and most successful play. The play ran off-Broadway in 1970, and on Broadway in 1971, and he received the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work. However, this play also received criticism for being too elliptical or too difficult to understand. Still, it was also made into a 1972 movie by 20th Century Fox. Soon thereafter, Charlotte Zolotow, a vice-president at Harper & Row, contacted him about writing for her book label.

Zindel wrote a total of 53 books, all but one of them aimed at children or teens. Many were set in his home town of Staten Island. They tended to be semi-autobiographical, focusing on teenage misfits with abusive or neglectful parents. Zindel himself grew up in a single-parent household; his mother worked at various occupations: hat check girl, shipyard worker, dog breeder, hot dog vendor, and finally licensed practical nurse, often boarding terminally ill patients at home. They moved frequently, and his mother often engaged in "get-rich-quick" schemes that did not succeed. His father abandoned them. This upbringing was most closely depicted in Confessions of a Teenage Baboon.