Susan Beth Pfeffer

Susan Beth Pfeffer is a bestselling young adult, young adult romance, and young adult fantasy fiction author from New York. Pfeffer was born in New York City in 1948 and lived with her family in Queens before they moved to Long Island. She had the opportunity to live outside the bustling center of New York but still traveled frequently enough with her mother to the city making for the perfect environmental childhood. Her mother was a secretary and during their visits to downtown New York, they would visit the Metropolitan Museum and the planetarium both of which piqued her curiosity. Susan published her debut novel “Just Morgan” in 1970 and the ease of publishing made her think that writing as a career was easy. However, it would take her two years to sell “Better than All Right” her second work. But she persisted and tackling edgy and difficult subject matters such as dysfunctional families, teen murder, sexual harassment, suicide, and runaway or missing children she finally made headway. She won her first award with the controversial title “About David” that she published in 1980. Pfeffer has also written novels for young readers and dealt with similar themes that she does in her young adult works. Even though she is a very versatile author, she is best known for writing young adult novels about young women dealing with adult problems that are on the cusp of understanding.