Woolfe was raised in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and completed tertiary studies at the University of Sydney and the University of New England.1
Her first novel, Painted Woman, was runner-up in the ABC Bicentennial Awards.2 Later she adapted the novel for stage and radio.3
She was awarded a Doctorate of Creative Arts by the University of Technology Sydney in 2005.4
Woolfe won the 1996 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards, Christina Stead Prize for fiction for Leaning Towards Infinity, which was shortlisted for the US TipTree Prize, and for the Commonwealth Prize, the winner in the Pacific- Asia region, and listed among the top for novels for final prize.5
Woolfe received grants from the Literature Board of the Australia Council, from 1994 to 2015.6
"Sue Woolfe". AustLit: Discover Australian Stories. The University of Queensland. Retrieved 2 February 2025. https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A10145 ↩
Smith, Hamilton (7 October 1989). "Portrait of a woman as an artist". The Canberra Times. Vol. 64, no. 17, 222. Australian Capital Territory, Australia. p. 21. Retrieved 2 February 2025 – via National Library of Australia. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article122090682 ↩
Woolfe, S (15 September 2015), A fictional work : The secret cure and a dissertation : a writer looks at creativity and neuroscience, retrieved 2 February 2025 https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/34297612 ↩