Zona Gale

Zona Gale (Portage, Wisconsin, 1874 - Chicago, 1938) was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright who wrote in English. She matters because she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, in 1921, for the stage version of her novel Miss Lulu Bett.

After studying at the University of Wisconsin, she worked as a newspaper writer in Milwaukee and New York before returning to her hometown in 1904 to devote herself fully to fiction. Portage, with its streets and its people, became the setting for much of her writing, and the Friendship Village stories, begun in 1908, portray everyday life in a quiet small town in the Midwest. Her early stories were warmly received, but after her parents died she turned toward mysticism in Preface to Life, a shift that critics met with coolness.

Gale was also an activist for women's suffrage, progressive politics and pacifism, and she backed the La Follette family. The frustration of women facing a lack of opportunities runs through many of her novels. Her legacy survives above all in the house in Portage that bears her name and in her place in American theatre history.