Charles Morley Baxter (born May 13, 1947) is an American novelist, essayist, and poet.
In 1974 he received his PhD in English from the University at Buffalo with a thesis on Djuna Barnes, Malcolm Lowry, and Nathanael West.
He then moved to the University of Michigan, where for many years he directed the Creative Writing MFA program.
He was a visiting professor of creative writing at the University of Iowa and at Stanford.
He taught at the University of Minnesota and in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.