Susan Eloise Hinton wrote "The Outsiders" when she was sixteen and went to high school in Oklahoma. She got the idea for the story when one of her friends was walking home from school and these kids jumped him because they didn't like him being a greaser. She said she got very angry and went home and wrote about it. She said, " I look back and I think it was totally written in my subconscious or something." Ponyboy's gang was inspired by a real-life gang. She said the members of the gang were very special to her. She also wrote other books. She wrote Big David, Little David, The Outsiders, The Puppy Sister, Rumble Fish, Taming the Star Runner, Tex, and That Was Then, This Is Now.

In high school she was a tomboy. She played football and her friends were mostly guys. She said when she wrote The Outsiders she never thought of it being published. But one day she told a friend and her mother wrote children's books so her friends mom read it. After that her friends mom sent it into a New York agent. The agent liked it and sent it to a second publisher. She has been her agent ever since.