José Rivera (born March 24, 1955) is a playwright and the first Puerto Rican screenwriter to be nominated for an Academy Award for the movie, The Motorcycle Diaries.

[3][4] Many of his plays have been produced across the nation and even translated into several languages, including: The House of Ramon Iglesia, Cloud Tectonics, The Street of the Sun, Sonnets for an Old Century, Sueño, Giants Have Us in Their Books, References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot and Adoration of the Old Woman.

Rivera will also direct and write the screenplay for "Celestina", a film loosely adapted from his play "Cloud Tectonics", which will be produced by Walter Salles.

[3][4] In 2002, Rivera was hired to write the screenplay for the film Diarios de Motocicleta (The Motorcycle Diaries) by director Walter Salles.

[4][7] On August 26, 2024, it was announced that a remake of the 1987 movie La Bamba, which was based on the life and career of musician Ritchie Valens, was in the works with Rivera attached to write the script.

However, he was profoundly influenced later by a Latin American novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude by 1982 Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez.

In The Promise and Each Day Dies With Sleep, Rivera discusses his experiences as a Puerto Rican in a small American town, with an emphasis on family, sexuality, spirituality and the occult.