Susan Elderkin was born in Crawley, Sussex, the daughter of a concert pianist and an architect. She studied English at Cambridge, and is a graduate of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She was the recipient of the Curtis Brown scholarship for her year.

She was awarded a Wingate scholarship to fund the research of her first novel in Arizona, where she spent several months living in a remote part of the Sonoran desert. Sunset over Chocolate Mountains (4th Estate, 2000), went on to win a Betty Trask prize and was published in nine countries. The following year she was listed as one of 21 women writers to watch out for in the 21st century by Orange Futures. Susan is currently adapting Sunset for film with BAFTA-nominated director Alicia Duffy.
 
Her second novel, The Voices (4th Estate, 2003), is set in the similarly remote landscape of Western Australia. It was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize for evocation of place. In the same year she was named by Granta as one of the 20 Best Young British Novelists of the decade. The Voices has also been optioned for film.
 
She lives in London, where she writes and reviews for various papers and magazines. She is a guest tutor on the MA at Goldsmiths College, London, and at City University, London.