She was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she has lived for most of her life.  She says, “it is a pleasant place to live if you don’t want to do anything…”

When she was seventeen, she published The Outsiders, a story about the greasers and the rich kids in high school.  Because she often writes from a boy’s point of view, she uses her initials S.E. instead of her name Susan Eloise.  She explains, “I figured that most boys would look at the book and think, ‘What can a chick know about stuff like that?’”