uzanne Tanner Chitwood grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the town of Rutherfordton, North Carolina. As a child she happily recalls planting herself on her bedroom floor with pencils and crayons and paper spread around her. Well into her teenage years, as her passion for art began to take lasting shape, she often found herself in exactly the same place, surrounded by art supplies. A love of the outdoors led her to enroll in Colorado College to begin her formal art training. She went on to receive her Bachelors of Art degree in art history at the University of North Carolina. With a desire to continue her study of art, Suzanne then received studio training at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Her formal art training concluded at Tulane University in New Orleans where she received a Masters in Fine Arts.

From Tulane, Suzanne moved to Los Angeles where she worked briefly at Christie's Auction House. Feeling ill-suited for work in the corporate environment, she began working freelance in film and video. Soon, however, she and her husband moved to Pensacola, Florida where she returned to teaching art, this time in elementary school during the day and evenings at the University of West Florida. In Pensacola, Suzanne and a friend began collaborating through the US Postal Service on a children's book. Living in a small, rented house whose owner would have been sorely disappointed had he found paint on his walls or floors, Suzanne looked for another medium to illustrate her friend's text. Always an admirer of Eric Carle, she decided on collage, using paper she tore mostly from Patagonia, a mail order catalog. In the end, the collaboration was fun but no publishers made an offer on their book. But Suzanne's illustrations did catch the eye of several editors who saw them. After illustrating a book on her own, Bear Gone Fishing, and still finding no eager publisher, Suzanne decided to take a break. She and her husband then moved to Charlottesville, Virginia. There she continued teaching art, first in high school until getting a job at the elementary school level. Eventually she was able to set up a studio space in her house where she pursued drawing and painting. She worked mostly drawing farm animals, only occasionally revisiting her idea for a new children's book with collage illustrations. That book was about farm animals and farm sounds. After many revisions of the project and ultimately a leave of absence from teaching, Wake Up, Big Barn became a reality and was published by Scholastic.

She then went on to publish a sequel to Chicka Chicka Boom Boom entitled Boom Chicka Rock (Philomel Books / Penguin Putnam) and is currently at work on Split! Splat! by Amy Gibson to be published by Scholastic, Inc.

Suzanne Tanner Chitwood lives just outside Charlottesville.