Edmund Ward (November 2, 1948 – May 3, 2021) was an American writer and radio commentator, the "rock-and-roll historian" for NPR's program Fresh Air from 1987 to 2017 and one of the original founders of Austin's South by Southwest music festival. Ward grew up in Eastchester, New York. He attended Antioch College and began his music-writing career in 1965. Ward lived in Berlin, Germany, between 1993 and 2008, when he moved to Montpellier, France. In 2013 he repatriated and was living in Austin, Texas, at the time of his death.