Zona Gale was born in Portage, Wisconsin, which she often used as a setting in her writing. She attended Wayland Academy in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and later entered the University of Wisconsin-Madison, from which she received a Bachelor of Literature degree in 1895, and four years, later a master's degree. In 1928 at the age of fifty-four she married William L. Breese, also of Portage.