Richard Stern (1928–2013) was an American writer and educator. His novels include Pacific Tremors (2001), Europe, or Up and Down with Baggish and Schreiber (1961), Golk (1960), Stitch (1965), and Natural Shocks (1978). His collected stories, Almonds to Zhoof, appeared in 2005. In 1985, he received the Medal of Merit for the Novel, awarded every six years by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.