While there are constant complaints about the dearth of good roles for actresses, screenwriter Susannah Grant has done her part to dispel that belief. Raised in Englewood, New Jersey with her two sisters and a brother, Grant attended Amherst and received her degree in English. She spent several years working at various publishing jobs (fact checker, researcher) before relocating to San Francisco where she spent two years writing and producing for local television. Moving once again, Grant headed south to L.A. and enrolled at the American Film Institute where she studied screenwriting. In 1994, she got to put her education to work when she was hired as a writer for the first season of Fox's family drama "Party of Five". During her tenure with the series, Grant got her first big screen assignment contributing to the script for Disney's animated "Pocahontas" (1995), although it was an experience she reportedly did not enjoy much, in part because of the endless rewrites. Still, it granted her an opportunity to craft a strong heroine, a trait shared with most of her produced scripts to date.

After departing "Party of Five" in the 1996-97 season, Grant went on to see her revisionist take on the Cinderella story produced. Although one of three credited writers on "Ever After" (1998), starring Drew Barrymore, she enjoyed terrific reviews and a modest box-office success. Grant was then tapped to pen the script for a biopic of real-life crusader "Erin Brockovich" (2000), but star Julia Roberts reportedly brought in Richard LaGravenese to punch up her dialogue. Still, Grant received sole screen credit on that blockbuster as she did on her next produced film, the Sandra Bullock rehab comedy "28 Days" (also 2000). Both of those releases featured strong, fully fleshed-out female characters, a rarity in Hollywood studio fare. Whatever her feelings of being rewritten may have been alleviated somewhat by her being tapped to make uncredited contributions to the screenplays for "Center Stage" and "Charlie's Angels" (both 2000) as well as "Unfaithful" (lensed 2001). Perhaps in an effort to gain more control over her work, Grant signed up to make her feature directorial debut on a love story that was in development as of early 2001.