Forgotten Authors: Arthur Leo Zagat
Last week, I mentioned Arthur Leo Zagat, who was born in New York on February 15, 1896. He collaborated with Nat Schachner on their first eleven short stories, before they both launched solo careers. Like Schachner, Zagat attended City College, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. After college, he served in World War I and studied at Bordeaux University before returning home to earn a law degree from Fordham University. He went on to found the Writers Workshop at New York University. In 1922, he married a woman Ruth Knopf and they had one daughter, Hermine.
Like Schachner, Zagat also practiced law until he decided he could make a living writing full time. In 1941, he was elected to the national executive committee of the Authors League’s pulp writers’ section.
1930 saw the start of his career as an author with the publication of “The Tower of Evil,” which he co-wrote with Nat Schachner. The two men collaborated on eleven stories published in 1931 before both turning to their solo careers as authors. Of the two, Zagat would prove to be the more prolific, although he wrote in a wide range of genres, with his science fiction forming only a small part of his output.