About Suzanne

Suzanne LaFleur was born just outside of Boston, Massachusetts in 1983. As she grew, she enjoyed many of the things that you might enjoy—swimming, eating pizza with her parents on Fridays, watching Saturday morning cartoons, riding her bike, listening to stories—but sometimes Suzanne liked to do things that didn’t make much sense to other people. One of those things was to write scribbles (she didn’t know how to write letters or words yet) on paper, roll the paper up into a scroll, and then unroll it to read her stories out loud to anyone who would listen.

When Suzanne was nine and entering fourth grade at St. John the Evangelist Elementary School in Wellesley, MA, a very important thing happened. She was handed a blank composition book and told to write five lines a day. Five lines a day turned into five pages a day, which turned into a novel; soon Suzanne announced that she would write books for kids her age when she grew up. People who were already grown up told her that she had plenty of time to change her mind, but, being someone who rarely changes her mind about anything, she never did.

In college, Suzanne focused on getting ready to be an author. Her love of stories and writing led her to a double-major in English and European History at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. She studied everything from the origin of language to creative writing to fantasy stories, and in the end received her degree with honors for a young-adult speculative novel called The Story of Green.

Suzanne then attended graduate school in the MFA Writing for Children program at The New School in New York City. It was there she began to write Love, Aubrey, which became her first published book.

Suzanne divides her time between New York City and Natick, Massachusetts. Although she has given up bike riding, Suzanne still likes swimming, pizza, cartoons, and listening to, making up, and sharing stories.