Pinckney Benedict (b. 1964) is an American short-story writer and novelist whose work often reflects his Appalachian background.

Benedict grew up on his family’s dairy farm in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. He graduated from Princeton University, where he studied primarily with Joyce Carol Oates, in 1986, and from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1988.

He has published three collections of short fiction, Miracle Boy and Other Stories, Town Smokes, and The Wrecking Yard and a novel Dogs of God, the last three of which were named Notable Books by The New York Times, and all of which have been published in England, Germany, and France. He has another book, Wild Bleeding Heart (a novel, due out in 2010).

His stories have appeared in, among other magazines and anthologies, Esquire, Zoetrope: All-Story, StoryQuarterly, Ontario Review, Appalachian Heritage, the O. Henry Award series (twice), the New Stories from the South series (twice), the Pushcart Prize series (three times), and The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Along with his wife, the novelist Laura Benedict, he has edited the poetry and fiction anthology Surreal South (Press 53 2007), which includes work from, among others, Robert Olen Butler, Joyce Carol Oates, William Gay, Ron Rash, and Rodney Jones.

He wrote the screenplay for the feature film Four Days (Cite Amerique 2000), which starred Colm Meaney (The Commitments, television’s Star Trek: The Next Generation), Lolita Davidovich (Blaze), and William Forsythe (The Rock).