Alan Kaufman is an American novelist, memoirist and poet who was instrumental in the development of the Spoken Word movement in literature.

Alan Kaufman's Matches was published by Little, Brown and Company in the Fall of 2005, and was published in the United Kingdom by Constable and Robinson the following year.His memoir — Jew Boy — was published by Fromm International/Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and Foxrock Books, imprint of Grove Press publisher and founder Barney Rosset.

David Mamet has called Kaufman's recently released novel Matches "an extraordinary war novel," and Dave Eggers has written that "there is more passion here than you see in twenty other books combined". Ruth Prawer has praised Kaufman's memoir, Jew Boy as "astonishing...a grand epic of a memoir", while the San Francisco Chronicle called it a "classic coming of age story." 

He is the editor of the bestselling 'The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.  He is also co-editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Literature, alongside Barney Rosset and Neil Ortenberg. His other books include The Outlaw Bible of American Essays and The New Generation: Fiction For Our Time From America's Writing Programs.