Anita Shreve is an American writer. The daughter of an airline pilot and a homemaker, she graduated from Dedham High School in Massachusetts, attended Tufts University and began writing while working as a high school teacher in Reading, MA. One of her first published stories, Past the Island, Drifting, (published in 1975) was awarded an O. Henry Prize in 1976.

Among other jobs, Shreve spent three years working as a journalist in Nairobi, Kenya. She also taught creative writing at Amherst College in the 1990s.The Pilot's Wife was selected for Oprah's Book Club in March 1999. Since then, Shreve's novels have sold millions of copies worldwide.

Her novel Resistance was turned into the 2003 movie with the same title Resistance, with Bill Paxton and Julia Ormond as the main characters.

Most recently, her essay "Found Objects" appeared in the anthology "Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting," published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2013.

She lives in New England.