Nicholson Baker is an American novelist and essayist born on January 7, 1957. His fiction often de-emphasizes narrative in favor of meticulous description and characterization. Baker's early novels, such as The Mezzanine and Room Temperature, are recognized for their detailed examination of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness. Out of his ten novels, three are categorized as erotica: Vox, The Fermata, and House of Holes.

Baker is also known for his non-fiction works. U and I: A True Story, published in 1991, explores his relationship with John Updike. In 2001, he addressed the American library system in Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, which earned him the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Calw Hermann Hesse Prize for its German translation. A pacifist, Baker wrote Human Smoke (2008), focusing on the events leading up to World War II.

Baker's articles have been featured in Harper's Magazine, the London Review of Books, and The New Yorker, among other publications. In 1999, he founded the American Newspaper Repository. Additionally, Baker has written about and edited Wikipedia.