Susan Eloise Hinton was born in 1950 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. While still in high school, Hinton began work on her first book, The Outsiders, writing and rewriting it from the time she was fifteen until its publication two years later. Ironically, Hinton received a "D" in her high school creative writing class while working on The Outsiders, which she based on her high school experiences. She wrote the book to fill a perceived gap in young adult fiction; excepting cowboy novels and animal stories, all of the other books seemed to focus on superficial topics such as high school dating rituals. The Outsiders, a realistic book about life in the inner city, was one of young adult literature's first "problem novels." This genre addresses typically "adult" problems ranging from death to divorce to abortion, and studies their effect on the lives of adolescents.

Hinton's novels...