Alan Cheuse (born January 23, 1940, Perth Amboy, New Jersey) is an American writer and critic, the son of a Russian immigrant father and a mother of Romanian descent. He graduated from Perth Amboy High School in 1957 and Rutgers University in 1961. After traveling abroad and working for several years at various writing and editing jobs, he returned to Rutgers to study for a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, which he was awarded in 1974 (having written a thesis on the life and work of the Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier). He then taught literature at Bennington College for nearly a decade and then took various posts at The University of the South, the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan before joining the faculty at George Mason University.

It was in the late 1970s that he began publishing short fiction, beginning with a story in The New Yorker and going on to write for magazines such as Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, and New Letters. He brought out his first novel, a biographical historical work about John Reed and Louise Bryant, in 1982, and a number of other works of fiction and nonfiction followed.

He is a regular book reviewer for the NPR radio program All Things Considered.

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