Elizabeth Lee Wurtzel was an American writer, journalist, and lawyer, best known for her confessional memoir Prozac Nation, which she published at the age of 27. Her work often focused on chronicling her personal struggles with depression, addiction, career, and relationships. Wurtzel's work drove a boom in confessional writing and the personal memoir genre during the 1990s, and she was viewed as a voice of Generation X. In her later life, Wurtzel worked briefly as an attorney before her death from breast cancer.

Brought up Jewish, Wurtzel's parents divorced when she was young. Her depression began at the ages of ten to twelve. She attended Ramaz for high school and was described as an overachiever by her teachers, who expected her to become a nationally famous writer. While an undergraduate at Harvard College, she wrote for The Harvard Crimson and the Dallas Morning News. Wurtzel also received the 1986 Rolling Stone Magazine College Journalism Award. Following her graduation, Wurtzel moved to Greenwich Village in New York City and found work as a pop music critic for The New Yorker and New York Magazine.