John Knowles (; September 16, 1926November 29, 2001) was an American novelist best known for A Separate Peace (1959).
Knowles was born on September 16, 1926, in Fairmont, West Virginia, the son of James M. Knowles, a purchasing agent from Lowell, Massachusetts, and Mary Beatrice Shea Knowles from Concord, New Hampshire. His father was a coal company executive, which earned an income that afforded the family a comfortable living. As a youth, Knowles would remark that he could write... meer