Glen Downey (born October 15, 1969) is a Canadian children's author, teacher, and academic from Oakville, Ontario.

His publications include more than ninety books for young people across a variety of genres that focus specifically on the development of child and adolescent literacy and numeracy.

Although he was routinely encouraged by teachers to read books that would challenge him, Downey's formative reading consisted almost exclusively of comic books, Choose Your Own Adventure novels, Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and the manuals and rulebooks of fantasy and science-fiction role-playing games, specifically Dungeons & Dragons and BattleTech.

He earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Victoria in 1998, expanding on his previous graduate work in examining the development of the chess motif in the Victorian novel.

Recent work includes the Rubicon/Oxford series, Interface, a combination of texts and online platforms designed to "help students build the skills of critical inquiry.