Banu Mushtaq (born 3 April 1948) is an Indian Kannada-language writer, activist, and lawyer from Karnataka. She is best known for Heart Lamp, a selection of her short stories translated by Deepa Bhasthi, which won the International Booker Prize in 2025. She has published six short story collections, a novel, an essay collection, and a poetry collection. Her work has been translated into Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and English.

Banu Mushtaq was born into a Muslim family in Hassan, Karnataka, on 3 April 1948. When she was eight years old, Mushtaq was enrolled in a Kannada-language missionary school in Shivamogga, on the condition that she must learn "to read and write Kannada in six months"; she exceeded expectations by beginning to write after a few days of school.

In contrast to community expectations, she attended university and married for love at the age of 26.

She was a reporter for the newspaper Lankesh Patrike and, for some months, she worked for All India Radio in Bengaluru.

Since the 1980s, Mushtaq has been involved in activist movements working to undermine "fundamentalism and social injustices" in Karnataka.

In 2000, a three-month "social boycott" was announced against Mushtaq and her family in response to her "advocacy of the right of Muslim women to enter mosques". During that time, she received menacing telephone calls and a man attempted to stab her but was thwarted by her husband.

In the early 2000s, Mushtaq joined the civil society group Komu Souhardha Vedike in protesting efforts to prevent Muslims from visiting a syncretic shrine in Baba Budangiri, Chikmagalur district.

Mushtaq has supported the right of Muslim students to wear hijab in schools, which has been challenged in Karnataka.