Paul Zindel Jr. was an American playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

, author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, and educator.
Zindel was born in Tottenville, Staten Island, New York to Paul Zindel,Sr., a policeman, and Beatrice Frank, a nurse; his sister, Betty (Zindel) Hagen, was a year and a half older than he. Paul Zindel, Sr. ran away with his mistress when Zindel was two, leaving the trio to move around Staten Island, living in various houses and apartments.

Through his teen years he wrote plays, though he trained as a chemist at Wagner College

Wagner College

Wagner College is a private, co-educational, national liberal arts college with an enrollment of approximately 2,400 total students located atop Grymes Hill in New York City's borough of Staten Island...

 and spent six months working at Allied Chemical

Allied Corp.

Allied Chemical Corporation was a major American company with operations in the aerospace, automotive, oil and gas industries. It evolved from the Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation....

 as a chemical writer after graduating.