Craig Lesley is a memoirist and novelist of the modern American west. He was born on July 5, 1945. Lesley has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize, first for his novel The Sky Fisherman in 1996 and again for Storm Riders in 2001.

He has received three Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Awards and an Oregon Book Award. His novel Winterkill was the first to win the Golden Spur Award for Best Novel and Medicine Pipe Bearer's Award for Best First Novel from the Western Writers of America.

Craig Lesley has been the recipient of several national fellowships and holds a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Whitman College. Currently, he is the Senior Writer-in-Residence at Portland State University and lives with his wife and two daughters in Portland, Oregon.