She became active in drama, the college literary magazine, the drill team, band, and a sorority. It was at this point that she first began to submit articles and stories for publication to magazines and journals. She won the college English Award when she graduated in 1968. Despite winning this award and her limited success publishing articles, she was not able to begin her professional career as a writer immediately. Zach had eloped with a man in college, and in 1969, they had a son. "There are people who are able to write with small children, but I wasn't one of them," she remarked in
SAAS. "With no help with childcare, I accomplished very little writing."
Still, Zach was able to begin work as a high school English teacher in Mississippi. There, in addition to the usual challenges of teaching young adults, Zach dealt with the problems of racial integration. She worked as hard as she could to become an effective teacher despite the tension in the school. She also, as she wrote in her sketch in SAAS, "discovered that I genuinely like my teenaged students, despite--or perhaps because of--the fact that my own adolescence was not a comfortable time.
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