Waldo David Frank (August 25, 1889 – January 9, 1967) was an American novelist, historian, political activist, and literary critic, who wrote extensively for The New Yorker and The New Republic during the 1920s and 1930s.

A radical political activist during the years of the Great Depression, Frank delivered a keynote speech to the first congress of the League of American Writers and was the first chair of that organization.

[citation needed] In 1916, Frank became associate editor of The Seven Arts, a journal that ran for just twelve issues but nonetheless became an important artistic and political influence.

[1] In 1929 together with fellow writers Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, and others Frank worked to raise money for striking workers in Southern textile mills.

[1] By the middle 1930s, Frank had moved close to the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA), culminating in his being tapped as speaker at the opening session of the founding convention of Communist-organized League of American Writers in April 1935.

[1] During the United States Presidential election of 1936, Frank was active in the ranks of Professional Groups for Browder and Ford, working in support of the CPUSA ticket.

[1] Frank's efforts on behalf of the Communist Party brought him some minor legal trouble when he was arrested together with CPUSA General Secretary Earl Browder when the two were campaigning in Terre Haute, Indiana, on September 30, 1936.

[1] There he interviewed Leon Trotsky,[1] held by the Joseph Stalin-led world Communist movement to be the leader of an international conspiracy to sabotage and overthrow the government of the USSR and the Russian Revolution itself.

Upon his return to the United States, Frank suggested in a letter to The New Republic that an international tribunal be established to investigate the merit or lack thereof regarding the charges made by the Soviet against Trotsky.

His lecture tour was organized by the University of Mexico,[4] as well as Argentinian editor Samuel Glusberg and Peruvian cultural and political theorist José Carlos Mariátegui.

[6] During his stay in Buenos Aires, Frank was attacked in his apartment by six armed men in response to "some opinions he expressed in regards to Argentine neutrality" in the war.

"[7] Based on his travels in the region and continuing studies, Frank published South American Journey in 1943 and Birth of a World: Simon Bolivar in Terms of His Peoples in 1951.