Horacio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza (Salto, Uruguay, 31 December 1878 –Buenos Aires, Argentina, 19 February 1937) was an Uruguayan playwright, poet, and short story writer.

He wrote stories which, in their jungle settings, use the supernatural and the bizarre to show the struggle of man and animal to survive. He also excelled in portraying mental illness and hallucinatory states. His influence can be seen in the Latin American magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez and the postmodern surrealism of Julio Cortázar.

Horacio Quiroga was born in Salto, Uruguay in 1878 as the sixth child, and second son of Prudencio Quiroga and Pastora Forteza, a middle-class family. At the time of his birth, his father worked for eighteen years as head of the Vice-Consulate Argentine Break. Before Quiroga was two and a half months old, on March 14 of 1879 his father accidentally fired a gun he carried in his hand and died. Quiroga was baptized just about 3 months later in the parish of his birth town.

His national origin is not entirely clear, having many conflicting reports about whether, besides baptism, he was registered as a citizen of Argentina in Uruguay, or not. It is expressed in several sources that his birth was registered in the Consulate of Argentina which operated in that city and by the fact his father exercising the office of consul of that country.^{[citation needed]}