Susan E. King is an artist and writer who grew up in Kentucky and still writes about it. She studied art at the University of Kentucky, and graduated with a degree in Ceramics. She worked for potter Bryon Temple in Lambertville, New Jersey and then earned a graduate degree from New Mexico State University. Susan and Christina Kruse, another artist and graduate student, taught one of the first Women & Art courses in the U.S. in 1973 as part of their graduate studies.

They invited Judy Chicago to lecture at their school, and the following year joined her in Los Angeles at the experimental Feminist Studio Workshop. They both helped create the Woman's Building, a public center for women's culture, modeled after the 1893 Woman's Buidling at the Chicago World's Fair.

Susan made her first artist's book in 1975 at the Women's Graphic Center at the Woman's Building, eventually becoming the studio director. She set up a studio in West Los Angeles, and made letterpress and offset artist's books there and at art centers around the US.

In the 1990s she bought a used medium format camera and began making photographs that became part of her bookwork. She moved back to Kentucky in 2003.

In 2020 she became interested in working in textiles, and has been making improv quilts throughout the pandemic.