NOVELIST UNITED STATESWhen I was young, girls never got to DO anything. They got to rat their hair and outline their eyes in black, but that was about the extent of their activities.
—S. E. HINTON
Susan Hinton watched as actor Matt Dillon performed a scene taken from her novel Tex. She still couldn’t believe that her book was going to become a movie. Her teenage fans had demanded it—they wrote so many letters to producers, begging that they make the movie, that Hollywood finally listened. Other movies followed, like Rumble Fish; That Was Then, This Is Now; and one based on Susan’s most famous novel, The Outsiders, which was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starred Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, and Tom Cruise.
Susan was very involved in the process of turning her books into movies. She wanted everything to be right, so she helped with many aspects of the productions. As a fifteen-year-old girl writing her first novel, The Outsiders, Susan never imagined that she would be published, that her stories would become some of the most popular books for teens ever, or that she would help turn them into movies.
Susan Eloise Hinton was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, around 1948. As a child, she loved to read, and she dreamed about becoming a writer. Her first writings were about cowboys and horses. Susan’s father died when she was in high school. She was close to him, and as he got sicker and sicker, she turned more and more to her writing.
While attending Will Rogers High School, Susan wrote The Outsiders. She began her first draft when she was just fifteen, and by the time the novel was published in 1967, she had rewritten the book four times! In her late teens, Susan became an overnight success. Unlike most other books at the time, her novel dealt with the reality of life for many teenagers. Although some people criticized the book for being too violent, most praised it for its true-to-life depiction of teen conflict.
The Outsiders tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his greaser friends as they fight against the socs (short for socials) and struggle to find their place in the world. Susan got her inspiration for the book from witnessing the real conflict between greasers and socs in her own hometown. She was bothered by the way many of her peers judged each other solely by appearance and income.
The film THE OUTSIDERS is dedicated to the students and librarians who requested that the book be made into a movie.
Susan’s novel was immediately popular with teens, and the critics gave it rave reviews. Her early success put a great deal of pressure on her, and she suffered from writer’s block for several years. Susan began to wonder if The Outsiders had just been a fluke. However, three years later she began writing again. After receiving a degree in education from the University of Tulsa in 1971, Susan published her second novel. That Was Then, This Is Now is also about teen conflict, violence, and troubled homes. Susan continued to work with this theme, publishing Rumble Fish in 1975, Tex in 1979, and Taming the Star Runner in 1988. All of her novels were well-received, and four were made into successful movies.
The same year THE OUTSIDERS was published, Susan received a D in her creative writing class!
Susan’s first four novels were written in the first person, with a boy narrating the story. She said she became the narrator as she told the story and felt more comfortable writing from a boy’s perspective. This may be because boys were some of her closest friends while growing up. She used her initials, S. E., while writing her books because when she published The Outsiders, she didn’t want readers to know she was a girl. She was afraid that no one would believe that a girl could really know anything about gangs, abusive parents, or peer pressure from a boy’s point of view.
Susan’s novels are still read and enjoyed by millions of teenagers each year. She’s also written children’s books. Her picture book Big David, Little David and chapter book The Puppy Sister were published in the mid-1990s. Susan’s books have won countless awards, such as the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults and the School Library Journal’s Best Books of the Year. Susan was also the first recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her success in reaching her young adult audience. Susan was one of the first authors to write realistically about the conflicts and concerns of teens. Her style has influenced the genre of young adult literature forever.