Joseph Payne Brennan (December 20, 1918 – January 28, 1990) was an American writer of fantasy and horror fiction, and also a poet. He lived most of his life in New Haven, Connecticut, and worked at the Yale Library for over 40 years.

Brennan's first professional sale came in December 1940 with the publication of the poem, "When Snow Is Hung", which appeared in the Christian Science Monitor Home Forum, and he continued writing poetry up until the time of his death. As a horror writer, Brennan started out writing stories for Weird Tales in 1952 and then began publishing his own magazine Macabre, which ran from 1957 to 1976. Several of his short stories concern an occult detective named Lucius Leffing. His 1958 collection Nine Horrors and a Dream, with classic stories like "Slime" and "Canavan's Back Yard", is celebrated in an essay by Stephen Gallagher in the book Horror: 100 Best Books, edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman.