Terry Southern (May 1, 1924 – October 29, 1995) was an American novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style. Part of the Paris postwar literary movement in the 1950s and a companion to Beat writers in Greenwich Village, Southern was also at the center of Swinging London in the 1960s and helped to change the style and substance of American films in the 1970s. He briefly wrote for Saturday Night Live in the 1980s.

Southern's dark and often absurdist style of satire helped to define the sensibilities of several generations of writers, readers, directors, and filmgoers. He is credited by journalist Tom Wolfe as having invented New Journalism with the publication of "Twirling at Ole Miss" in Esquire in February 1963. Southern's reputation was established with the publication of his comic novels Candy and The Magic Christian and through his gift for writing memorable film dialogue as evident in Dr. Strangelove, The Loved One, The Cincinnati Kid, and The Magic Christian. His work on Easy Rider helped create the independent film movement of the 1970s.

Southern was born in Alvarado, Texas. He graduated from Sunset High School in Dallas, Texas in 1941. He attended North Texas Agricultural College for a year as a pre-med major before transferring to Southern Methodist University, where he continued to cultivate his interest in literature. From 1943 to 1945, he served in the U.S. Army as a demolitions technician during World War II. Stationed in Reading, England with the 435th Quartermaster Platoon (allowing for frequent forays to London), he earned a Bronze Star and a Good Conduct Medal. In the autumn of 1946, he resumed his studies at the University of Chicago before transferring to Northwestern University, where he received his undergraduate degree in philosophy in 1948.

Southern left the United States in September 1948, using a G.I. Bill grant to travel to France, where he ostensibly pursued graduate studies at the Faculté Des Lettres of the Sorbonne; as funding was not contingent on the conferral of a degree or certificate, this was a common expedience employed by American bohemians of the era who wished to avail themselves of postwar France's enduringly favorable exchange rate, flourishing illicit markets and comparative dearth of discrimination against African Americans. His four-year stint in Paris was a crucial formative influence, both on his development as a writer and on the evolution of his "hip" persona. During this period he made many important friendships and social contacts as he became a central figure in the expatriate American café society of the 1950s. He became close friends with Mason Hoffenberg (with whom he subsequently co-wrote the novel Candy), Alexander Trocchi, John Marquand, Mordecai Richler, Aram Avakian (filmmaker, photographer and brother of Columbia Records jazz producer George Avakian), and jazz musician and motorsport enthusiast Allen Eager. He also met expatriate American writer James Baldwin and leading French intellectuals Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus.

Southern frequented the Cinémathèque Française in Paris and saw jazz performances by leading bebop musicians including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis, evoked in his classic "You're Too Hip, Baby". During the early 1950s he wrote some of his best short stories, including "The Butcher" and "The Automatic Gate", both published in David Burnett's New-Story magazine. His story "The Accident" was the first short story published in the Paris Review in its founding issue (1953); it was followed by "The Sun and the Still-born Stars" in issue #4. Southern became closely identified with the Paris Review and its founders, Peter Matthiessen, Harold L. "Doc" Humes, and George Plimpton, and he formed a lifelong friendship with Plimpton. He met French model Pud Gadiot in 1952; a romance soon blossomed and the couple married just before they moved to New York City.

In 1953, Southern and Gadiot returned to the US and settled in Greenwich Village in New York City. As he had in Paris, Southern quickly became a prominent figure on the artistic scene that flourished in the Village in the late 1950s. He met visual artists such as Robert Frank and Larry Rivers. Through Mason Hoffenberg, who made occasional visits from Paris, he was introduced to leading beat writers including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso.

He frequented renowned New York jazz venues such as the Five Spot, the San Remo, and the Village Vanguard. It was in this period that Southern read and became obsessed with the work of British writer Henry Green. Green's writing exerted a strong influence on Southern's early work, and Green became one of Southern's most ardent early supporters.

Southern struggled to gain recognition during this period, writing short stories as he worked on Flash and Filigree, his first solo novel. Most of these stories were rejected by leading magazines and journals. Here, as in Paris, Southern was almost entirely supported by his wife Pud, but their relationship fell apart within a year of their arrival in New York and they were divorced in mid-1954.