Joseph Stewart Burns, better known as J. Stewart Burns, is a television writer and producer most notable for his work on The Simpsons, Futurama, and Unhappily Ever After. Burns attended Harvard University, where he wrote for the Harvard Lampoon.

Noted in the DVD commentaries of "The Deep South" and "Roswell That Ends Well", Burns has an M.A. in Mathematics from UC Berkeley, where he studied under John Rhodes.[citation needed] Burns is partly credited for The Simpsons’ inclusion of a number of complex mathematical concepts and jokes within the series.

Burns was famously referenced in a 1993 Newsweek article about his decision to jump from pursuing a graduate degree in mathematics to writing comedy: "You could read the entire story of American decline in that one career move."

Burns got his start by writing for Beavis and Butthead. Since then, he has written for The Simpsons, Futurama, and Unhappily Ever After.

Burns has won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Animation Program four times - for Futurama in 2002, and for The Simpsons in 2006, 2008 and 2019.

Aside from writing on the original series, Burns also wrote the script for the Futurama video game as well as one of the Spyro games. Burns developed and has served as the game runner of The Simpsons: Tapped Out since its inception.

Burns lives in Los Angeles and is married to screenwriter Lillian Yu.