Vilis Lācis (born Jānis Vilhelms Lāce (Old orthography: Jahn Wilhelm Lahze) on 12 May 1904, died 6 February 1966) was a Latvian writer and communist politician.

During World War I, his family fled to the Altai region in Siberia, where Lācis studied at the pedagogical seminary in Barnaul.

Throughout this period, Lācis maintained underground ties to the officially banned Communist Party of Latvia.

In the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, eight films based on Lācis's works were produced, including a new adaptation of Fisherman's Son [lv] in 1957.

When Nazi Germany occupied Latvia from 1941 to 1944, Lācis was evacuated to Moscow, where he continued to write in a socialist realist style.