Charlotte Zolotow (born Charlotte Gertrude Shapiro June 26, 1915 in Norfolk, Virginia) is an American author, poet, editor, and publisher of many books for children (HarperCollins puts her number of "books for young audiences" at over seventy).

She has been published by more than 20 different houses (many of which she has outlasted). She was an editor, and later publisher, at Harper & Row, which was called Harper & Brothers when she began to work there and is now known as HarperCollins.

Among the many writers she edited are Paul Fleischman, Paul Zindel, Mary Rodgers, Robert Lipsyte, and Francesca Lia Block.

She is the mother of the writer Crescent Dragonwagon and poker tournament champion Stephen Zolotow. She was married to Maurice Zolotow from 1938 until their divorce in 1969. She lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

The poem "Missing You" from River Winding appears in Best Friends, a collection of poems, and "People" from All That Sunlight appears in the collection More Surprises (both of these anthologies bear the emblem, "A Charlotte Zolotow Book"). She contributed a story (called Enemies, illustrated by Ben Shecter) to The Big Book for Peace where she appears alongside other well-known authors and illustrators including Lloyd Alexander, Steven Kellogg and Trina Schart Hyman.