Jesse Hill Ford (December 28, 1928 – June 1, 1996) was an American writer of Southern literature, best known for his critical and commercial success in short fiction as well as the novels Mountains of Gilead and The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones.
In 1961, he spent a year at the University of Oslo as a Fulbright Scholar and published his first novel, Mountains of Gilead, and in 1964 he wrote both the teleplay and theatrical scripts of The Conversion of Buster Drumwright.
A critical and commercial success, it earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction writing, and was later adapted by Ford and Stirling Silliphant for a 1970 feature film directed by William Wyler.
Other works by Ford include Fishes, Birds, and Sons of Men, a compilation of his early short stories; The Feast of Saint Barnabas, which focused on a Florida race riot; and The Raider, a historical novel set in Tennessee before and during the American Civil War.
He was initially indicted on a charge of first degree murder by a Gibson County Grand Jury and released on $20,000 bond at the preliminary hearing.