Susan Jane Freedman Ross was born on April 12, 1941 in Alameda, California, the second child of Theodore (Ted) and Stella (Mathews) Freedman. The family, including Susan's older sister Sarah, joined Berkeley Friends Meeting on April 26, 1946, the two daughters being enrolled as birthright Friends. When she was young, Susan helped with programs for Quaker children. In 1959, together with George Millikan, also of Berkeley Meeting, she served on the team running the children's program at Pacific Yearly Meeting at La Honda, California. Susan was on Berkeley Meeting’s Library Committee for a few years, as well as the Kitchen Committee.
After attending university at Guilford College, Greensboro, North Carolina she returned to the Bay Area and finished her schooling at San Jose State College. Susan worked for the San Francisco school district as a school librarian for her entire working life. After retiring, she volunteered for the Orinda Historical Society.
Susan met Peter Ross, of Santa Clara, California at Berkeley Friends Meeting while he was getting his PhD in mathematics at UC Berkeley. Peter had been teaching mathematics at the state college in Santa Clara. Susan changed her name to Susan Ross in 1968, though there is no record of their marriage. Their son Jonathan was born January 27, 1969.
She enjoyed reading and spending time at the family cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains. When she was a child, her mother, Stella, who was helping with the Dewey decimal system that was being developed at that time, was asked her opinion on whether science fiction deserved its own classification or should be classified with general fiction. Stella didn't like science fiction very much, so she gave Susan several science fiction books to read and asked Susan's opinions on how they should be classified. From then on Susan particularly enjoyed reading science fiction and had one of the largest personal collections of science fiction in the world.
Around 1964, Susan's parents had a small house built for her next to their house in Orinda. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when she was a pre-teen. Since there weren't treatments available at that time, she spent most of her life either in pain or on opioids.
After her retirement, she continued to live in Orinda, California with her sister Sarah, but as her condition grew worse, she moved to a convalescent home in Alamo, California. Susan passed away March 22, 2018.