Stephen Tolkin is an American screenwriter, with most of his credits being television films. Among his better known films are crime dramas based on real events, such as "Cleveland Abduction" and "The Craigslist Killer".

Tolkin's father was comedy writer Mel Tolkin (1913-2007), and his mother was Edith Tolkin, who had served as senior vice president of legal affair in Paramount pictures. Tolkin has a brother, the novelist Michael Tolkin (1950-).

Tolkin was educated at Yale College and Yale School of Architecture. During his college years, he started work as a writer. His best known work in print was the short story "Notes for a Biography of Lelia Reiszman" (1975), for which he won the Peter J. Wallace Prize for Fiction.

Tolkin started his screenwriter career in the late 1970s, writing episodes for the sitcom "Delta House" (1979), a short-liven spin-off of "National Lampoon's Animal House". He has since worked on many other series, including service as head writer for the fantasy series "Legend of the Seeker" (2008-2010). The series was a television adaptation of the novel series "The Sword of Truth" by Terry Goodkind (1948-).