Patty Dann is an American novelist and nonfiction writer. She studied at the University of Oregon, and later earned an MFA in writing from Columbia University. While working at the A&E network in 1986, she revised Mermaids, a coming-of-age novel she had written as her master's thesis, which was subsequently published by Ticknor and Fields. It was later made into a feature film of the same name in 1990.