Curtis Bill Pepper was an American journalist and author, who published seven books. He was Newsweek's Mediterranean bureau chief in Rome from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s. He also worked for Edward R. Murrow at the Rome bureau of CBS, and covered the Vatican for United Press. His last work, Leonardo, was a biographical novel of Leonardo da Vinci. It was conceived in the years following his studies of the Italian Renaissance at the University of Florence.