Susan McQuilkin graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and became a member of the original national-award-winning staff of Outside magazine. Her coverage of the Will Steger North Pole dogsled expedition was voted best coverage by the team (North Pole). She also covered treasure-hunting on the shipwrecked Spanish galleon, The Atocha, as well as the BOC Challenge, a transglobal single-handed sailing race. Her stories have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, Stern, and Epoca. Her travel writing has appeared in the Dallas Morning News and The Yacht. She was one of the first independent publishers on Amazon and was awarded best-selling book in a travel category in 1996 (Inside Monaco). She traveled the world on assignment with her husband, photographer Robert McQuilkin.

After the loss of her husband in a drowning accident on a magazine assignment, McQuilkin worked for the Parsons Corporation, an international environmental consulting firm, and was responsible for public outreach at the original air emissions trading program, Cash for Clunkers, and chemical weapon cleanup sites at Newport, Indiana, and Spring Valley, Washington DC. She was a certified hazmat response and Emergency Management Incident Command System trainer from 2008-2011 at a rural access hospital in Montana under a grant provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

McQuilkin is an advocate for citizen science in public health. She divides her time between a farm in Missouri and a cabin in northwest Montana.