Growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, S.E. Hinton hated the social cliques she and her classmates inevitably fell into. It was this through this anger that motivated her to write and publish Outsiders at the age of 16 in 1967.

Despite authoring other books such as Rumble Fish and That was Then, Hinton would never live up to the success of Outsiders, a book stolen more often than any other book from many public libraries across the country even 20 years later, according to librarians who write her letters.

Many young boys also write fan letters, addressing them to Mr. Hinton. The neutral name, she said, was deliberate. At the time Outsiders was published, it was assumed because a young woman was writing about teenage-boy delinquence, it would not be received well. The neutral name was intended to fool the critics, which it did. The name also allows for a sense of anonymity, as Hinton is a particularly private person.

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