Ann Cleeves (born 1954) is an English crime-writer. In 2006 she won the inaugural Duncan Lawrie Dagger, the richest crime-writing prize in the world, for her novel Raven Black. Cleeves was born in Herefordshire and brought up in north Devon; she studied English at the University of Sussex but dropped out and then took up various jobs including cook at the Fair Isle bird observatory, auxiliary coastguard, probation officer, library outreach worker and child care officer. She lives in Whitley Bay, and is widowed with two daughters.

The Vera Stanhope novels have been dramatised as the TV detective series Vera and the Jimmy Perez novels as the series Shetland.

In 2014 Cleeves was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Sunderland. In 2015, Cleeves was the Programming Chair for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival & the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. In 2015, she was shortlisted for the Dagger in the Library UK Crime Writers' Association award for an author's body of work in British libraries (UK) In February 2019 Ann Cleeves appeared on Desert Island Discs.