In a letter, Zona Gale reveals that her first story was printed in pencil because she did not yet know how to write. “And the story appeared in a book. I made this book of manila paper, bound with a ribbon,” she continued. [1]
Zona Gale was born on 26 August 1874 in Portage, Wisconsin, a modest Midwestern USA town. Its character would later influence much of her literary output. She was the only child of Charles Franklin Gale, a railway engineer, and his wife, Eliza Beers Gale, formerly a schoolteacher. Books were readily available in her home. She began writing and illustrating stories at the age of 7, and at age sixteen submitted a short story to her local newspaper, for which she was paid $3.
Gale grew up attentive to the neighbourly exchanges, quiet routines, and underlying tensions of her hometown at the turn of the century. Even as a child, she recognised that ordinary lives hid dramatic force and moral complexity, and these observations would later find their way into her portrayals of small-town America.
Gale’s education continued with distinction. She attended the University of Wisconsin, earning her bachelor’s degree in 1895. At a time when relatively few women undertook advanced study, she returned to complete a master’s degree in literature in 1899. University life exposed her to a broader intellectual world and the emerging professional possibilities for women in the literary field. Her instructors identified her potential and supported her early efforts in poetry and short fiction.
After graduating, Gale spent six years working as a journalist in Milwaukee and New York City, which refined her style and sharpened her sense of observation. She returned to Portage in 1904, inspired by the belief that her “old world was full of new possibilities.”
By the 1920s, Gale’s writing showed a new sense of realism, and she published the popular novel Miss Lulu Bett, which was about family dynamics and the role of women. Miss Lulu Bett was adapted into a stage play, and in 1921 won her the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the first woman to receive this award. She wrote more than twenty-five books, numerous acclaimed plays, several hundred short stories and poems, and countless essays.
Gale became a single parent after adopting a girl, but remained single until her fifties, when she married a childhood friend. She supported various political and social causes, including women’s rights, pacifism, and education.
Zona Gale died in December 1938, aged 64.
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