肯·克西（英语：Ken Kesey，1935年9月17日－2001年11月10日）出生于美国科罗拉多州奥特罗县，为美国作家，以写小说而著名。

1935年，克西出生在美国科罗拉多州奥特罗县，他出生在一个奶牛场的农场主家庭，父亲弗雷德里克·A·史密斯·克西，母亲格伦瓦·史密斯。

1946年，克西全家搬到了俄勒冈州斯普林菲尔德。

在高中和大学期间，克西是174磅体重的摔跤冠军得主，但是因肩膀的伤病而无缘奥林匹克队。 1953年，克西在斯普林菲尔德高中毕业。

1956年，克西在俄勒冈大学念书，并且在大学里结识了自己的妻子，两人后来结婚，育有多个子女。 1967年，克西在俄勒冈大学的新闻学院获得学士学位。 1958年，克西获得伍德罗·威尔逊国家奖学金并且进入斯坦福大学创意写作计划，在斯坦福大学，他发表《飞越疯人院》，从而一举成名，震惊美国文坛。

Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey (/ˈkiːziː/; September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist, and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s.

Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating from the University of Oregon in 1957. He began writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1960 following the completion of a graduate fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University; the novel was an immediate commercial and critical success when published two years later. Subsequently, he moved to nearby La Honda, California and began hosting happenings with former colleagues from Stanford, miscellaneous bohemian & literary figures (most notably Neal Cassady), and other friends under the imprimateur of the Merry Pranksters; these parties, known as Acid Tests, integrated the consumption of LSD with multimedia performances. He mentored the Grateful Dead (the de facto "house band" of the Acid Tests) throughout their incipience and continued to exert a profound influence upon the group throughout their long career. Sometimes a Great Notion—an epic account of the vicissitudes of an Oregon logging family that aspired to the modernist grandeur of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha saga—was a commercial success that polarized critics and readers upon its release in 1964, although Kesey regarded the novel as his magnum opus.