Lanford Wilson (born on April 13, 1937 in Lebanon, Missouri) is an American playwright. He was raised in the Ozarks until, as a teenager, he moved to California to live with his father, from whom his mother had been long divorced. He began his career as a playwright in the early 1960s at the Caffe Cino in Greenwich Village with one-act plays such as Ludlow Fair, Home Free, and The Madness of Lady Bright. He soon moved to off-Broadway with Balm in Gilead in 1964 and The Rimers of Eldrich in 1965. Wilson was a founding member of the Circle Theatre Company, which began in 1969. Many of his plays were first presented there, including The Hot L Baltimore , which won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Outer Critics' Circle Award , and the Obie Award, and Fifth of July , which later had a successful production on Broadway. Wilson's 1979 play, Talley's Folly won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Other plays by Wilson include:

• The Gingham Dog (1968)
• Lemon Sky (1970)
• The Mound Builders (1975)
• A Tale Told (1981, later revised and renamed "Talley & Son")
• Angels Fall (1982)
• Burn This (1987)
• Redwood Curtain (1993)
• Book of Days (2000)