Margaret Edith Weis (/waɪs/; born March 16, 1948) is an American fantasy and science fiction author of dozens of novels and short stories.

She is founding CEO and owner of Sovereign Press, Inc and Margaret Weis Productions, licensing several popular television and movie franchises to make RPG series in addition to their own.

In 1999, Pyramid magazine named Weis one of The Millennium's Most Influential Persons, saying she and Hickman are "basically responsible for the entire gaming fiction genre".

[6][8] With 4 million sales of the first book in the US and UK,[5] it grew into a trilogy of novels, called the Dragonlance Chronicles, and 15 linked modules.

[6][8] Jean Black, managing editor of TSR's book department, selected Weis and Hickman to write the series.

According to the Kansas City Star profile of major local authors "transformed" by pioneering fantasy author J. R. R. Tolkien, the duo sought to recapture the reality-grounded and humanized experience of Tolkien literature but without copying or emulating it, so a reader could imagine meeting their original magical characters in a real place like a bus stop and conversing using pronounceable names.

[3] She attributed their writing partnership's longevity to specialization, where Hickman was the world builder and storyteller who defines "when the moon rises and which way the winds blow", and she brought characters and substance.

She wrote plot ideas and dialogue scraps upon napkins and envelopes until she got a portable computer, and got nervous if unable to work.

She mentally, happily, inhabited her own fictional worlds; and upon completion, suffered "a real depression" due to abandoning characters that seemed realer than most people.

[6] In the late 1990s, Larry Elmore brought his fantasy world of Loerem to Weis and Hickman, which they wrote as the Sovereign Stone novel trilogy, published by Del Rey.

[14] Weis was inducted into the Origins Hall of Fame in 2002, recognized in part for "one game line turned literary sensation: Dragonlance".

[9]: 351  To support the setting, Weis and Perrin wrote the short story "Shadamehr and the Old Wives Tale" that was published in Dragon #264 (October 1999).

[9]: 353  It published an RPG line based on several licenses, including Serenity and Battlestar Galactica, and Ed Greenwood's new solo venture into roleplaying, Castlemourn.

Weis has served on the board of directors of Mag Force 7, Inc., the developer of the Star of the Guardians and Wing Commander Collectible Trading Card Game (CCGs).

Her next project was a solo novel called The Soulforge, based on her favorite character from the trilogy, the dark wizard Raistlin.

[6] Wizards of the Coast published a new trilogy of Dragonlance novels by Weis and Hickman called War of Souls, beginning with Dragons of a Fallen Sun (2000).

During this period, Weis also co-authored with Hickman The Lost Chronicles trilogy starting with Dragons of the Dwarven Depths in July 2006.

[17] In October 2020, Weis and Tracy Hickman filed suit against Wizards of the Coast for breaching a license for a new Dragonlance novel trilogy.