Jeff VanderMeer is an American author, editor, and literary critic, born on July 7, 1968. Initially associated with the New Weird literary genre, VanderMeer crossed over into mainstream success with his bestselling Southern Reach Series. The series' first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula and Shirley Jackson Awards, and was adapted into a Hollywood film by director Alex Garland.

Among VanderMeer's other novels are Shriek: An Afterword and Borne. He has also co-edited, with his wife Ann VanderMeer, influential and award-winning anthologies such as The New Weird, The Weird, and The Big Book of Science Fiction. VanderMeer has been called "one of the most remarkable practitioners of the literary fantastic in America today," with The New Yorker naming him the "King of Weird Fiction." His fiction is noted for eluding genre classifications even as his works bring in themes and elements from genres such as postmodernism, ecofiction, the New Weird, and post-apocalyptic fiction.

VanderMeer's writing has been described as "evocative" and containing "intellectual observations both profound and disturbing," and has been compared with the works of Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, and Henry David Thoreau. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Salon, and The Washington Post. VanderMeer founded the Sunshine State Biodiversity Group nonprofit in 2023 and is a four-time World Fantasy Award winner and a 20-time nominee.

His previous novels include Veniss Underground and the Ambergris Cycle (which includes City of Saints & Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch). His nonfiction titles include Wonderbook, the world’s first fully illustrated writing guide, and Booklife, the first career guide to fully integrate the internet into tactics and strategy.