Peter Orner is an American writer. He is the author of three novels, three short story collections and two books of essays. Orner holds the Professorship of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and was formerly a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University. He spent 2016 and 2017 on a Fulbright Grant in Namibia teaching at the University of Namibia.

Orner was born in Chicago and grew up in Highland Park, Illinois. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1990. He later earned a Juris Doctor degree from Northeastern University School of Law, and an MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop.

In 2001, Orner published his first book, Esther Stories,. It won a prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Young Lions Fiction Award from the New York Public Library, and was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times. Of Esther Stories, The New York Times wrote, "Orner doesn't just bring his characters to life, he gives them souls."

In 2006, Orner published his first novel, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, which was set in Namibia, where Orner worked as an English teacher in the 1990s; it won the Bard Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Orner was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, as well as the two-year Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship for 2007–08.

Orner served as editor of two non-fiction books, Underground America (2008) and Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives (2010), both published by McSweeney's / Voice of Witness. His 2011 novel, Love and Shame and Love received positive reviews and was a New York Times Editor's Choice Book, and California Book Award winner.

In 2013, Little Brown released two books by Orner: a new edition of Esther Stories (with an introduction by Marilynne Robinson) and a new collection of stories, Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge.

Orner's stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney's, The Believer, and The Southern Review. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and twice won a Pushcart Prize.

Orner is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He has taught at San Francisco State University, Iowa Writers' Workshop, the Warren Wilson MFA Program, University of Montana, Washington University in St. Louis, Miami University, Bard College, and Charles University in Prague.