Moniro Ravanipour (Persian: منیرو روانی‌پور; born July 24, 1952) is an Iranian-American and internationally acclaimed innovative writer who is the author of ten titles published in Iran, and many more in United States, including two collections of short fiction, Kanizu and Satan's Stones, and the novels The Drowned, Heart of Steel, and Gypsy by Fire.

Her tales, described as "reminiscent in their fantastic blend of realism, myth, and superstition of writers like Rulfo, Garcia Marquez, even Tutuola," frequently take as their setting the small, remote village in southern Iran where she was born.

Nahid Mozaffari, editor of Strange Times, My Dear: The International PEN Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature, wrote that Ravanipour "has been successful in the treatment of the complex subjects of tradition and modernity, juxtaposing elements of both, and exposing them in all their contradictions without idealizing either."

Ravanipour was among seventeen activists to face trial in Iran for their participation in the 2000 Berlin Conference, accused of taking part in anti-Iran propaganda.

It was during the harrowing days of imprisonment that she decided to become a widely recognized and successful writer upon regaining her freedom, determined not to suffer the fate of being silenced and forgotten like so many others.

Additionally, she received invitations from prestigious institutions and events such as the Goethe-Institut, the Literary Center of Gümüşlük in Bodrum, the Gothenburg Expo in Sweden, and the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Germany, and France.

Six months later she received another two year fellowship from Black Mountain Institute's City of Asylum as a visiting author, at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Her short stories have been translated into Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Kurdish, Polish (by Ivonna Nowicka), Swedish, Turkish.