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Eugene Cunningham (1896–1957) was an American writer of Western, mystery, and sea stories, born on November 29, 1896, in Helena, Arkansas. He served in the Navy during both World Wars and began writing in 1915. He sold his first story to the pulps in 1920, hit his stride by 1923, and published more than 400 stories in pulp magazines, with a steady stream appearing until 1938.

After several years in San Francisco in the early 1920s, he moved to El Paso, where he held several jobs while establishing himself as a writer. He served as book-review editor for the El Paso Times from the mid-1920s to 1936 and for the New Mexico Magazine from 1936 to 1942. In 1922 Cunningham published Gypsying through Central America and in 1924 The Trail to Apacaz, his first western novel.

During the 1930s he hit his stride as an author, coming to rank among the best Western writers who aimed at a middle ground between sophisticated stories and pulp novels. Among the best known of his violent books were Riders of the Night (1932), which involved the deaths of some seventy men, and Buckaroo (1933), in which three Texas Rangers kill about 300 villains.

His most successful book was probably Triggernometry (1934), a nonfiction study of famous gunfighters, which went through several editions and was reissued in 1941 as Gunfighters All. In 1986 Triggernometry was named one of the thirty-six best nonfiction Western books of all time by the Western Writers of America.

He married Mary Caroline Emilstein in 1921, and the family moved from El Paso to the San Francisco area in 1942. Cunningham served as vice president of the American Fiction Guild and was an avid collector of cowboy songs in both English and Spanish. He died in San Francisco on October 18, 1957, survived by his wife, one son, and two daughters.