Rafi Zabor (born Joel Zaborovsky, August 22, 1946) is a Brooklyn, New York music journalist- and musician-turned-novelist. He received the 1998 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his first novel, The Bear Comes Home, which follows an alto saxophonist - who happens to be a bear - in his pursuit of musical perfection. Zabor's second book, the memoir I, Wabenzi, was commercially unsuccessful and met with mixed critical response. In 2008, Zabor received an NEA Literature Fellowship.
Zabor became a jazz critic for Musician in 1977, and later became an editor for the magazine. Zabor is also a jazz drummer.