María Luisa Puga (Mexico City, February 3, 1944 - Ibidem, December 25, 2004) was a Mexican writer and essayist.

After the death of her mother, she spent her childhood in Acapulco, Guerrero and her adolescence in Mazatlán, Sinaloa. After residing in Mexico City, she decides to move to live in a house in a forest on the shores of Lake Zirahuén, in Michoacán. In 1968, she left Mexico and settled in London, Rome, Greece and Nairobi. In 1983, she received the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize for her novel Panic or Danger. In 1995 she is kidnapped, and she picks up on that experience of her in the novel Panic or Danger. In 2002 she began to suffer from the pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis, which led her to write in the year 2004 Diario del dolor.

She contributed to the Mexican newspapers El Universal, La Jornada and Unomásuno.

In December 2004 she was diagnosed with cancer of the liver and lymph nodes in an advanced stage; she passed away within three weeks. Her numerous diaries, documenting her personal and literary life, were donated in 2016 to the University of Texas at Austin.