Natalie Goldberg is an American popular author and speaker. She is best known for a series of books which explore writing as Zen practice.

Goldberg lived in Brooklyn until she was six, when her family moved out to Farmingdale, Long Island, where her father owned the bar, the Aero Tavern. From a young age, Goldberg was mad for books and reading, and especially loved Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, which she read in ninth grade. She believes that single book led her eventually to put pen to paper when she was twenty-four years old.

She received a BA in English literature from George Washington University and an MA in humanities from St. John's University. Goldberg has painted for as long as she has written, and her paintings can be seen in Living Color: A Writer Paints Her World and Top of My Lungs: Poems and Paintings.