Erma Louise Bombeck (born Erma Fiste; February 21, 1927 - April 22, 1996) was an American (United States) humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper column that described suburban (suburbia) home life humorously from the mid-1960s until the late 1990s. Bombeck also published 15 books, most of which became best-sellers.

From 1965 to 1996, Erma Bombeck wrote over 4,000 newspaper columns chronicling the ordinary life of a midwestern suburban housewife with broad, and sometimes eloquent, humor. By the 1970s, her columns were read, twice weekly, by thirty million readers of 900 newspapers of the U.S. (United States) and Canada.Citation neededdate=January 2010