Paul Zindel was born in Staten Island, New York, on May 15, 1936.

His father abandoned the family when Zindel was still very young, and this desertion may be the source of the many broken families in his writings.

His family, dogged by poverty, moved frequently in New York. Zindel was diagnosed with tuberculosis when he was fifteen and was placed in a sanatorium for a year and a half, delaying his graduation from high school by a year. He attended Wagner College, earning a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1958, and eventually a master's in chemistry. After a brief stint as a technical writer, he became a high school chemistry teacher, teaching on Staten Island from 1959 to 1969.

He had already begun writing plays while in college, and his interest in writing combined with his interest in his teenage students led him to write The Pigman (1968; see...