Paul Zindel

Paul Zindel (1936-2003) was an American playwright and young adult novelist born in Staten Island, New York. Trained as a chemist, he taught high school science for a decade while studying playwriting under mentor Edward Albee, and won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. He turned to fiction with The Pigman (1968) and My Darling, My Hamburger, building a body of young adult work centered on misfit teenagers with troubled families, often set on Staten Island. Zindel received the American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award in 2002 for lifetime contribution to young adult literature. Late in his career he wrote the Zone Unknown adventure series, including Loch, Raptor, and Reef of Death, blending cryptozoology with thriller pacing for younger readers.