With the possible exception of Harper Lee, America may not have a more reclusive living author than S.E. Hinton, whose novel, The Outsiders, brought gangs, violence, and disaffected youth into the front of the country’s consciousness in 1967. Intrepid readers could discern from various sources that the author is a woman, that she was only 17 when The Outsiders was published, and that she lives in Tulsa, but little more than that. Now, for the first time, Susan Eloise Hinton is breaking her decades-long public silence to participate in the rollout of a new recut version of Francis Ford Coppola’s film adaptation of the book.