Susan Cowan was born in Greenock, Scotland and came to live in Australia in 1962. She has lived in several Australian states, but settled in Canberra in 1976. She graduated from the Australian National University with a BA (Hons) in 1995 and completed an MA in English in 2000. An inveterate traveller, Cowan has been a research assistant in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra.