Gary Paulsen Biography
By: Allie Miller, Casey Warren, and Marissa Goetz
Gary Paulsen was born on May 17, 1939, in Minneapolis. Gary was never a very good student but he really loved reading, which was one of the reasons why he had such a passion for literature. He has written over 175 books and over 200 articles and short stories. Paulsen left home when he was 14 to get away from his family and go into a carnival and worked many small jobs. Gary has a mom named Eunice Paulsen, a dad named Colonal Paulsen, and a wife named Ruth Paulsen. He ended up going to college in Minnesota for two years and worked as a trapper to pay for it. After two years Paulsen decided to go into the army so he left college. Soon after that he decided to become a writer when he was working in California at an aerospace firm. He left that job to become a writer and wrote up a fake resume to be able to become an editor for a magazine in Hollywood, which began his writing career. He is one of the most important writers of young adult literature today and three of his novels - Hatchet, Dogsong, and The Winter Room - were Newbery Honor Books. He also became a lover of dog racing and he ran the Iditarod in 1983 and 1985. After 1985 he discovered that he had a heart disease called angina and had to give up dog racing because it was too risky for him to race in case of a heart attack from his disease. Paulsen was always proven to be an outdoor lover, from running the Iditarod to writing mostly all of his stories about outdoor adventures. Paulsen won the Margaret A. Edwards Award in 1997 and has many award winning books as well. He presently owns a place in both La Luz New Mexico and Willow Alaska, where he breeds and trains dogs for the Iditarod.