Douglas Thayer (born 1929) is a professor and author in Utah.

Douglas Thayer was born in 1929 and grew up in Provo, Utah. At seventeen, he enlisted in the United States Army, serving in Germany, where he would later return as a missionary. Thayer earned degrees from Brigham Young University (BYU)(BA, English), Stanford (MA), and the University of Iowa (MFA, fiction writing), and had begun doctoral programs at Stanford and University of Maryland when he discovered his passion for fiction writing. He has since published several works in quarterly publications; most of his writing focuses on the Mormon experience, but also reflects his love of the outdoors, which he developed as a child. Thayer is currently a professor of composition at BYU, specializing in fiction writing, but also teaches courses on the short story and Mormon literature, among other things. He is married to Donlu DeWitt, with whom he has six children.

Over the course of his career, Thayer has received a Karl G. Maeser Creative Arts Award, an Alcuin Fellowship in General Education, and several prizes for his work, including a Dialogue Award in Fiction and Association for Mormon Letters awards for short fiction, novels, and lifetime membership. He is currently the author of fifteen short stories and two collections thereof, five novels, an interview, and is working on a memoir and a young adult novel.