Sylvia Lawson (1932–2017) wrote essays, critical journalism and fiction.

She published widely on film, media and cultural politics, and worked in print and broadcast journalism, the film industry, in universities and adult education programmes.

Her work includes the multi-award-winning The Archibald Paradox, a study of the early Sydney Bulletin and its first editor; the group of stories and essays, How Simone de Beauvoir Died in Australia, which won the Gleebooks prize for 2003, and The Outside Story, a novel centred on the Sydney Opera House.