Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth was an American author of children's fiction and poetry. Her novel The Cat Who Went to Heaven won the 1931 Newbery Medal.Born in Buffalo, New York, Coatsworth attended Buffalo Seminary for High School, then graduated from Vassar College in 1915 and received a Master of Arts from Columbia University in 1916.

She was an international traveler, which later influenced her writing.Her first publications were poems in magazines, and her first book published was Fox Footprints (1923). In 1929, she married writer Henry Beston, with whom she had two children. She died at her home in Nobleboro, Maine, August 31, 1986.