Albert Ramsdell Gurney Jr. as pen name A. R. Gurney (sometimes credited as Pete Gurney) was an American playwright, novelist and academic. He is known for works including The Dining Room (1982), Sweet Sue (1986/7), and The Cocktail Hour (1988), and for his Pulitzer Prize nominated play Love Letters. His series of plays about upper-class WASP life in contemporary America have been called "penetratingly witty studies of the WASP ascendancy in retreat."