José María Andrés Fernando Lezama Lima was a Cuban writer, poet and essayist. He is considered one of the most influential figures in Cuban and Latin American literature. His novel Paradiso is one of the most important works in Spanish and one of the best novels of the 20th Century according to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

José Lins do Rego Cavalcanti was a Brazilian novelist most known for his semi-autobiographical "sugarcane cycle." These novels were the basis of films that had distribution in the English-speaking world.

José Luandino Vieira is an Angolan writer of short fiction and novels.

José Luís Marques Peixoto is a Portuguese author, poet and playwright. A professional writer since 2001, his works have been translated into more than 30 languages.

José Luis Sampedro Sáez was a Spanish economist and writer who advocated an economy "more humane, more caring, able to help develop the dignity of peoples". Academician of the Real Academia Española since 1990, he was the recipient of the Order of Arts and Letters of Spain, the Menéndez Pelayo International Prize (2010) and the Spanish Literature National Prize (2011). He became an inspiration for the anti-austerity movement in Spain.

José Mancisidor Ortiz was a Mexican writer, historian and politician.

José Manuel Prieto is a Cuban novelist, translator and scholar.

José Manuel Restrepo Vélez was an investigator of Colombian flora, political figure and historian. The orchid genus Restrepia was named in his honor.

José María Álvarez (31 May 1942 – 7 July 2024) was a Spanish poet and novelist.

José María Arguedas Altamirano was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist. Arguedas was an author of Spanish descent, fluent in the Native Quechua language, gained by living in two Quechua households from the age of 7 to 11 – first in the Indigenous servant quarters of his step-mother's home, then, escaping her "perverse and cruel" son, with an Indigenous family approved by his father – who wrote novels, short stories, and poems in both Spanish and Quechua.