Richard Joanne Nelson (born October 17, 1950) is an American playwright and librettist. He wrote the books for the Tony Award-winning musicals James Joyce's The Alive, the Broadway version of Chess, as well as the critically acclaimed play cycle The Apple Family Plays. Nelson was born in Chicago, Illinois to Viola, a dancer, and Richard Finis Nelson, an accounting-systems analyst and some times sales representative. During Nelson's childhood, the family moved frequently to accommodate his father's work, but they settled for long stretches in Gary, Indiana, the outskirts of Philadelphia, and finally in a suburb of Detroit. Nelson's earliest theatrical influences were in musical theatre, and he estimates that he saw more than twenty-five musicals before ever seeing his first straight play. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1972, and received an honorary Doctor of Literature degree from Hamilton College in 2004. He married Cynthia Blair Bacon on May 21, 1972; they have two daughters, Zoe (b. 1983) and Jocelyn (b. 1988).

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