David Gessner is an American essayist, memoirist, nature writer, editor, and cartoonist.

Gessner was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard College where he worked at the Harvard Crimson drawing political cartoons, most notably a drawing of Ronald Reagan urinating on an unemployed man in the gutter called "The Trickle Down Theory." He graduated in 1983. He is married to the novelist Nina de Gramont.

He is the author of eleven books that blend a love of nature, humor, memoir, and environmentalism, including Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness and the New York Times-bestselling All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West. His prizes include a Pushcart Prize, the John Burroughs Award for Best Nature Essay, the Association for Study of Literature and the Environment’s award for best book of creative writing, and the Reed Award for Best Book on the Southern Environment. In 2017 he appeared on the National Geographic Explorer show "The Call of the Wild."