Zibby Oneal

Zibby Oneal (born Mary Elizabeth Bisgard; March 17, 1934 – January 23, 2025) was an American author of young adult fiction. Raised in Omaha and based in Ann Arbor, Michigan for much of her life, Oneal is known for a series of three novels published in the 1980s that address topics of mental health, grief, and identity.

Biography Mary Elizabeth Bisgard was born on March 17, 1934 in Omaha, Nebraska, the daughter of Dr. James Dewey Bisgard and Mary Elizabeth Dowling Bisgard. Nicknamed "Zibby" from before birth, Bisgard attended fourth grade through high school at Brownell Hall, a private girls' school in Omaha. As a child, she developed a preference for character-driven storytelling in response to her grandfather's love of adventure fiction, which she viewed as too plot-driven.

Bisgard studied English at Stanford University, following through on her desire to leave Omaha and seek a coeducational, high-quality university. writing in 1983 that "Children are different now. They're amazed that anyone could ever have believed in war." War Work won the 1972 Friends of American Writers Young People's Literature Award.

In the early 1980s, Oneal wrote three young adult novels addressing issues of mental health, grief, and identity. The Language of Goldfish (1980) and A Formal Feeling (1982) were described by Contemporary Literary Criticism as "candid, unsentimental portrayals of teenagers with emotional difficulties." In Summer Light (1985) discusses the relationship between a father and daughter whose identities are in conflict. All three works place some of their storylines on islands, which Oneal described in a 1986 interview as her "responsibility to make children understand that adolescence is a self-absorbed world." Oneal died on January 23, 2025 at her home in Ann Arbor.

Selected works