Joanne Burns is a contemporary Australian poet and prose writer, with a strong emphasis on performance in her work. Burns grew up and lives in Sydney. She studied at the University of Sydney and has taught English and creative writing at secondary and tertiary levels in Australia and England.

Her work hovers between poetry and prose, and often incorporates 'found writing' from newspapers and other everyday sources. She has been particularly concerned with the blurring of the distinctions between poetry and prose in her work, and has written extensively in prose poem/ micro-fiction forms.

In the 1980s she participated in the experimental writing group Sydney Women Writers' Workshop. She has published ten collections of poetry, with Footnotes of a Hammock sharing the 2005 Judith Wright Award for a collection of poetry.