Mary Hunter Austin (September 9, 1868 – August 13, 1934) was an American writer. 

One of the early nature writers of the American Southwest, her classic The Land of Little Rain (1903) describes the fauna, flora, and people of the region between the High Sierra and the Mojave Desert of southern California.

She was born in Carlinville, Illinois (the fourth of six children) to Susannah (née Graham) and George Hunter. She graduated from Blackburn College in 1888. Her family moved to California in the same year and established a homestead in the San Joaquin Valley.

She married Stafford Wallace Austin on May 18, 1891, in Bakersfield, California. He was from Hawaii, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, a United States General Land Office employee, and, later, a Potash War lawyer.

For 17 years, Austin made a special study of the lives of the indigenous peoples of the Mojave Desert. Her publications set forth the intimate knowledge she thus acquired. She was a prolific novelist, poet, critic, and playwright, as well as an early feminist and defender of Native American and Spanish-American rights.