Paul Zindel (15 May 1936 – 27 March 2003) was an American playwright, author, and educator.
Zindel was born on Staten Island, New York to Paul Zindel, a policeman, and Betty Frank, a nurse. Through his teen years he wrote plays, though he trained as a chemist at Wagner College and spent six months working at Allied Chemical after graduating. He later quit and worked as a high school science teacher at Tottenville High School on Staten Island.
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Paul Zindel (15 May 1936 – 27 March 2003) was an American playwright, author, and educator.
Zindel was born on Staten Island, New York to Paul Zindel, a policeman, and Betty Frank, a nurse. Through his teen years he wrote plays, though he trained as a chemist at Wagner College and spent six months working at Allied Chemical after graduating. He later quit and worked as a high school science teacher at Tottenville High School on Staten Island.
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. It was also made into a 1972 movie by 20th Century Fox. Charlotte Zolotow, then a vice-president at Harper & Row contacted him to writing for her book label. Zindel wrote 39 books, all of them aimed at children or young adults.
Many of these were set in his home town of Staten Island, New York. They tended to be semi...
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