David Morrell (born April 24, 1943) is a Canadian-American novelist whose debut 1972 novel First Blood, later adapted as the 1982 film of the same name, which went on to spawn the successful Rambo franchise starring Sylvester Stallone. He has written 28 novels, and his work has been translated into 30 languages. He also wrote the 2007–2008 Captain America comic book miniseries The Chosen.
During his time at Penn State he met science fiction writer Philip Klass, better known by the pseudonym William Tenn, who taught the basics of writing fiction. Morrell began work as an English professor at the University of Iowa in 1970. In 1972, his novel First Blood was published; it would eventually be made into the 1982 film of the same name starring Sylvester Stallone as Vietnam veteran John Rambo. Morrell continued to write many other novels, including The Brotherhood of the Rose, the first in a trilogy of novels, which was adapted into a 1989 NBC miniseries starring Robert Mitchum. He gave up his tenure at the university in 1986 in order to write full-time. In 1988 he received the Horror Writers Association award for best novella; Orange Is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity.