Paul Zindel was born in 1936 on Staten Island, New York. When he was two, his father abandoned the family, leaving his mother to support herself and her young son. Zindel and his mother moved 15 times during his childhood in search of stable work for his mother, leaving Zindel struggling to form relationships, and as a result, he became deeply introverted and withdrawn from his peers. After graduating college, Zindel worked as a high school chemistry teacher for a decade before quitting to pursue his writing career.

He wrote his first play, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, about a troubled teenage girl and her school science fair project. The play won a Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Desk Critic’s Circle Award. When an editor for Harper & Row, Charlotte Zolotow, saw the play, she encouraged Zindel to write a novel about teenagers. Drawing from the personalities of a teen boy and girl he once met, Zindel created The Pigman. Zindel sought to channel much of his childhood trauma into his writing; thus, all his work features kids and teens struggling with difficult home lives and searching to find their place in a dangerous and unforgiving world.