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Laura Wade (born 16 October 1977) is an English playwright. She was born in Bedford and grew up in Sheffield, where her father worked for a computer company.

After completing her secondary education at Lady Manners School, she studied Drama at Bristol University and was later a member of the Royal Court Theatre Young Writers' Programme.

Her first play, Limbo, was produced at the Sheffield Crucible Studio Theatre in 1996. 16 Winters was produced at the Bristol Old Vic Basement Theatre in 2000. After university she worked for the children's theatre company Playbox Theatre in Warwick.

Her adaptation of W.H. Davies' Young Emma opened at the Finborough Theatre, London (where she was later Writer-in-Residence) in December 2003. In 2004 she was a writer on attachment at Soho Theatre and her play Colder Than Here was produced there in February 2005. Her next play Breathing Corpses played at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in March 2005. In March 2006, she returned to the Soho Theatre with Other Hands. 2010 marked her reappearance at the Sheffield Crucible with her reworking of Alice in Wonderland, entitled Alice.

Other projects include new plays for the Royal Court Theatre, Hampstead Theatre and David Pugh Ltd. and a television adaptation of Colder Than Here. Her first radio play, Otherkin, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 30 August 2007, a 45-minute play billed as episode 2 of the Looking for Angels series. Her second, Hum, about the Bristol Hum, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 20 May 2009. Between these two she also wrote Coughs and Sneezes for the Radio 4 series Fact to Fiction.

In April 2010, her play Posh began a sell-out run at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court Theatre, London. An article about her in the London Evening Standard drew parallels between the Riot Club, the subject of Posh, and the Bullingdon Club, an exclusive Oxford University dining society.

On 11 May 2012, an updated version of Posh opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in London, her first play to appear in the West End. In 2013, filming began on The Riot Club, a film adaptation of the play directed by Lone Scherfig, released on 19 September 2014. Her plays are published by Oberon Books in the UK and by Dramatists Play Service in the US. In February 2015 the regional premiere of Posh will be co-produced by Nottingham Playhouse and Salisbury Playhouse.