Russell Earl Banks (March 28, 1940 – January 8, 2023) was an American writer of fiction and poetry. His novels are known for "detailed accounts of domestic strife and the daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters". He drew from his own childhood in the working class, but also from the larger world, such as his years in Jamaica. His novels often reflect "moral themes and personal relationships".

Banks was a member of the International Parliament of Writers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Russell Earl Banks was born in Newton, Massachusetts, on March 28, 1940, and grew up "in relative poverty." He was the son of Florence (née Taylor), a homemaker, and Earl Banks, a plumber, and was raised in Barnstead, New Hampshire. His father deserted the family when Banks was aged 12, making their survival even more difficult.

Awarded a scholarship to attend Colgate University, Banks dropped out six weeks into university and traveled south instead, with the "intention of joining Fidel Castro's insurgent army in Cuba, but wound up working in a department store in Lakeland, Florida".

He married Darlene Bennett, who was working as a sales clerk at the time. They had one daughter and later divorced.

According to an interview with The Independent, he started to write when he was living in Miami in the late 1950s. In a separate interview with The Paris Review, he said the writing came after his return to New England in 1964 and settling in Boston. He married Mary Gunst. They had three daughters together before getting divorced in 1977.

Supportive of his writing, the Gunst family paid for him to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during their early marriage; he graduated in 1967. In Chapel Hill, Banks was involved in Students for a Democratic Society and protest during the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1976, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.