Paul Zindel was born on 15 May 1936 on Staten Island. His policeman father (also named Paul Zindel) deserted his family when Paul was two years old and his sister, Betty, was four. Zindel has said that he only saw his father about ten times before his death in 1957 and that he deeply resents growing up fatherless. His mother, who was a practical nurse, took many kinds of strange jobs to make ends meet-and as a result moved her family almost every year while Zindel was growing up. When his mother died of cancer in 1968, Zindel had been teaching high-school chemistry for ten years on Staten Island. He was then ending a sabbatical from his teaching position during which he served as a playwright in residence in Houston, and he had just published his groundbreaking first novel, The Pigman. After he quit teaching, Zindel focused on writing plays and young adult novels, and in 1971 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his emotional and electrifying play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. While helping to produce the play in Cleveland, he met Bonnie Hildebrand, the playhouse publicity director, and in 1973 he married her.
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