John Monk Saunders (November 22, 1897 – March 11, 1940) was an American novelist, screenwriter, and film director.

He served in the Air Service during World War I as a flight instructor in Florida, but was never able to secure a posting to France, a disappointment that frustrated him for the remainder of his life.

After the University of Washington, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, entering in the fall of 1919 where he was the first American to attend Magdalen College.

Wings garnered $39,000 for the writer - the highest sum paid for film rights at that time - as well as the first Academy Award for Best Picture.

In 1926 Famous Players–Lasky/Paramount purchased the screen rights to Saunders's unfinished novel about pilots in World War One for a then-record $39,000.

Saunders published a series of short stories collectively referred to as "Nikki and Her War Birds" in Liberty magazine.

The Dawn Patrol was remade in 1938 starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone and David Niven.

[9] In 1934, Saunders was involved in a highly publicized fist fight with actor Herbert Marshall, a veteran of WWI.

Despite care by a nurse from Johns Hopkins hospital, Saunders hanged himself at a Fort Myers, Florida, beach cottage on March 11, 1940.