Susan Eloise Hinton was born in 1950 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Outsiders was published in 1967, when Hinton was only 17 years old and attending Will Rogers High School. She began writing the first draft of the novel when she was 15, and writing and rewriting took a year and a half before she was happy with the final copy.
The publisher—believing that the book would have more credibility if people assumed that a male had written it—advised her to use her initials, S. E.
Early Years
Hinton was not a member of a gang when she wrote The Outsiders, but she was a friend to many greasers. She has stated that her biggest compliment was that her greaser friends liked the book. Although she also had friends who were Socs, she definitely did not consider herself a part of that group. Her mother’s reaction to the novel was shock; she said, “Susie, where did you pick up all of this?”
Education
The success of The Outsiders enabled Hinton to attend the University of Tulsa where she earned a degree in education in 1970. However, during her student teaching, she decided that she did not have the physical stamina to be a teacher. She found herself teaching all day and then worrying about the kids all night.
Hinton did meet her future husband, David Inhofe, in a freshman biology class, and it was due to him that she finished her second book, That Was Then, This is Now. Hinton was suffering from writer’s block, and he forced her to write two pages a day. If she failed to produce two pages during the day, they wouldn’t go out that night. They were married in 1970, and That Was Then, This is Now was published in 1971.
