William Reinhold "Gatz" Hjortsberg^[1][2] (February 23, 1941 – April 22, 2017^[3][4]) was an American novelist and screenwriter, who wrote the screenplay of the film Legend.^[2][5]

His novel Falling Angel was the basis for the film Angel Heart (1987).^[6] The novel was adapted into an opera in 2015, composed by J. Mark Scearce with a libretto by Lucy Thurber.^[4][7][8]

Hjortsberg was the only child of a Swedish restaurateur father and a Swiss mother. He attended Dartmouth College, the Yale School of Drama (where he met Thomas McGuane), and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He was married three times, and had a son and a daughter.^[2][3] He died of pancreatic cancer.^[2]

• Alp (1969)
• Gray Matters (1971)
• Symbiography (1973)
• Toro! Toro! Toro! (1974)
• Falling Angel (1978)
• Tales & Fables (1985), published by Sylvester & Orphanos
• Nevermore (1994)
• Mañana (2015), a thriller set in Mexico.^[9]
• Angel's Inferno (2020)

• Thunder and Lightning (1977)
• The Georgia Peaches (1980) (TV)
• Legend (1985)

• Hjortsberg, William (2012). Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan. Counterpoint Press. ISBN 9781582437903. A biography of writer Richard Brautigan.