Gillian Flynn is an American author, screenwriter, and producer, best known for her thriller and mystery novels Sharp Objects (2006), Dark Places (2009), and Gone Girl (2012). Her works have been translated into 40 languages, and by 2016, Gone Girl had sold over 15 million copies worldwide.

Flynn wrote the screenplay for the 2014 film adaptation of Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher, for which she won the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and was nominated for both the Writers Guild of America and the BAFTA awards, among others. She also wrote and produced the HBO limited series adaptation of Sharp Objects, receiving nominations for the Primetime Emmy and the Writers Guild of America Award.

Additionally, she co-wrote the screenplay for the 2018 film Widows alongside director Steve McQueen. Flynn served as showrunner, writer, and executive producer for Amazon Prime Video’s sci-fi thriller series Utopia (2020). As of 2024, she is working on her fourth novel, to be published by Penguin Random House.

Flynn, who lives in Chicago, grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated from the University of Kansas and earned a Master's degree from Northwestern University.