Evan Shelby Connell, Jr. (August 17, 1924 - January 10, 2013) is an American novelist, poet, and short story-writer born in Kansas City, Missouri. He has also published under the name Evan S. Connell, Jr. His writing has covered a variety of genres, although he has published most frequently in fiction.

In 2009, Connell was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, for lifetime achievement. On April 23, 2010, he was awarded a Los Angeles Times Book Prize: the Robert Kirsch Award, for "a living author with a substantial connection to the American West, whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition."

He graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City in 1941. He started undergraduate work at Dartmouth College but graduated from the University of Kansas in 1947, with a B.A. in English. He studied creative writing at Columbia University in New York and Stanford University in California. He never married, and lived and worked in San Francisco for decades. Connell lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.