Reality Hunger: A Manifesto is a non-fiction book by American writer David Shields, published by Knopf on February 23, 2010.

The book's manifesto is directed toward increasing art's engagement with the reality of contemporary life through the exploration of hybrid genres such as prose poetry and literary collage.

According to his argument, traditional genres, such as realist fiction, are failing to adequately reflect lived reality because they have gone largely unchanged since their early development, and are therefore obsessed with current events because society rarely experiences any.

Shields argues that plagiarism is something that artists have always partaken in, and that only recently has the act acquired the stigma it has, due in large part to copyright legislation and the culture surrounding it.

Rather than shy away from wholesale appropriation, Shields encourages it, stating that "reality-based art hijacks its material and doesn't apologize.

"[6] Shields also places great importance on working in and creating new artistic forms, emphasizing in particular that the boundaries of genre (which he refers to as a "minimum-security prison"[7]) should constantly be bent and broken.

James Wood was one of the book's most prominent critics, describing it in his review in The New Yorker as "highly problematic" in its "unexamined promotion of what he insists on calling 'reality' over narrative.