John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an acclaimed American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. A distinguished member of the literary world, Updike was one of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, a feat he shares with Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner, and Colson Whitehead. Over his prolific career, Updike published more than twenty novels, over a dozen short-story collections, as well as works of poetry, art and literary criticism, and children's books.

His deep involvement with The New Yorker began in 1954, where hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems were featured. He was also a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His most celebrated works include the "Rabbit" series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit at Rest; and the novella Rabbit Remembered), which chronicles the life of the middle-class everyman Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom across several decades.

Updike's writing is noted for its careful craftsmanship, unique prose style, and prolific output, averaging a book a year. His narratives often revolve around the American small town, Protestant middle class, weaving in themes of personal turmoil, crises relating to religion, family obligations, and marital infidelity. His fiction, celebrated for its attention to the concerns, passions, and suffering of average Americans, also highlights Christian theology and a preoccupation with sexuality and sensual detail. Updike's distinctive prose style, marked by a rich, sometimes arcane vocabulary, attempts "to give the mundane its beautiful due".