Leon Marcus Uris (August 3, 1924 – June 21, 2003) was an American author of historical fiction who wrote many bestselling books, including Exodus (published in 1958) and Trinity (published in 1976).

Leon Uris was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Jewish-American parents, Wolf William and Anna (Blumberg) Uris. His father, a Polish-born immigrant, was a paperhanger, then a storekeeper. William spent a year in Palestine after World War I before entering the United States. He derived his surname from Yerushalmi, meaning "man of Jerusalem." "He was basically a failure," Uris later said of his father. "He went from failure to failure."