Susan Arenella is a hair stylist-turned-attorney-turned-writer based in Austin Texas. In 2024, her work was featured in Law Moms: Juggling Motherhood, Ambition, and Personal Fulfillment, a personal essay collection by eight women lawyers which achieved number one bestseller status in six Amazon categories and continues to draw speaking engagements at conferences nationwide.

She is a longstanding member of the Writers’ League of Texas and is busy querying her completed memoir.  Susan is also at work on a novel and is currently publishing a weekly series on her social media sites called Letters From a Lawrence Girl, a candid and sometimes comical romp through her chaotic days as a single mom/hairstylist in 1981, via the letters she wrote to her boyfriend in bootcamp from her shuttered East Coast mill town.

Susan studied history and literature at the University of California, Irvine, and law at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to her writing career, she spent over fifteen years as a government attorney, battling against Big Pharma for fraud in the healthcare sector.

Susan lives with her husband—that former boyfriend in bootcamp—and not far from her three grown daughters, all of whom still tap her for legal advice and the occasional haircut. While you can usually find Susan on a hiking trail or on her laptop, she keeps her law license handy and her scissors sharp.