Susan L. Groenke is a professor English education and Children’s and Young Adult Literature in the Department of Theory and Practice in Teacher Education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Director of the Center for Children’s and Young Adult Literature.

She earned a BA in English in 1993 and an MA in curriculum and instruction in 1995 from Virginia Tech. She then taught English, language arts, and creative writing at the middle and high school levels for six years before returning to Virginia Tech to pursue her doctoral degree in curriculum and instruction. In 1999, Groenke was nationally board certified in English/language arts for adolescents. She received her PhD in 2003. Her research interests include adolescent motivation to read and adolescent understandings of young adult literature. Groenke is currently the program advisor for the English education program. She teaches courses in secondary English methods, composition pedagogy, and young adult literature. She is the former editor of English Leadership Quarterly, an NCTE publication. In 2014, she became the director of the Center for Children’s and Young Adult Literature at UT.