Ronald Milner (May 29, 1938 – July 9, 2004) was an American playwright. His play Checkmates, starring Paul Winfield and Denzel Washington, ran on Broadway in 1988. Milner also taught creative writing at the University of Southern California, Wayne State University, and Michigan State University. He attended Northeastern High School. He also briefly attended Highland Park Junior College and Detroit Institute of Technology.
In 1962, he won the John Hay Whitney Foundation fellowship to help aid him to complete a novel, Life With Father Brown, which remains unpublished. He went to New York City to join Harvey Swados's writing workshop at Columbia University. Under the mentorship of Langston Hughes, Milner was able to get a Rockefeller Foundation grant.