Bruno Schulz (12 July 1892 – 19 November 1942) was a Polish Jewish writer, fine artist, literary critic, and art teacher. He is regarded as one of the great Polish-language prose stylists of the 20th century. In 1938, he was awarded the Polish Academy of Literature's prestigious Golden Laurel award. Several of Schulz's works were lost in the Holocaust, including short stories from the early 1940s and his final, unfinished novel The Messiah. Schulz was tragically shot and killed by a Gestapo officer in 1942 while walking back home toward Drohobycz Ghetto with a loaf of bread.

At a very early age, Schulz developed an interest in the arts. He studied at a gymnasium in Drohobycz from 1902 to 1910, and proceeded to study architecture at Lwów University. In 1917, he briefly studied architecture in Vienna. After World War I, the region of Galicia, which included Drohobycz, became Polish territory. In the postwar period, Schulz taught drawing at a Polish gymnasium from 1924 to 1941. His employment kept him in his hometown, although he reportedly disliked his profession as a schoolteacher, maintaining it only because it was his source of livelihood.