Dame Susan Elizabeth Hill, Lady Wells, is an English author of fiction and non-fiction works, born on 5 February 1942.

Her novels include The Woman in Black, which has been adapted for stage and screen, The Mist in the Mirror, and I'm the King of the Castle, for which she received the Somerset Maugham Award in 1971. She also won the Whitbread Novel Award in 1972 for The Bird of Night, which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Susan Hill was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, and her hometown was later referred to in her novel A Change for the Better (1969) and some short stories, especially "Cockles and Mussels". She attended Scarborough Convent School, where she became interested in theatre and literature. Her family left Scarborough in 1958 and moved to Coventry, where her father worked in car and aircraft factories. Hill states that she attended a girls’ grammar school, Barr's Hill, where she took A levels in English, French, History, and Latin, proceeding to an English degree at King's College London. By this time, she had already written her first novel.

She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours, both for services to literature.