John Horne Burns was a United States author. He is best known as the author of the 1947 story-cycle The Gallery, which depicts life in Allied-occupied Naples, Italy, in 1944 from the perspective of several different characters. In this work he explores the themes of material and class inequality, alcoholism, relations between the sexes, and sexuality in general, including homosexuality, with the encounter between American and Neapolitan culture as a general thematic backdrop. The "Gallery" referred to is the Galleria Umberto I in down-town Naples.

Burns's works often feature homosexual themes, and he is known as a gay novelist. As recorded by his contemporary Gore Vidal, Burns said that "to be a good writer, one must be homosexual, perhaps because his or her marginalized status provides the gay or lesbian author with an objectivity not attainable within mainstream culture." Burns's fiction though, is not exclusively restricted to gay themes. Some of his fictional pieces use a heterosexual female perspective, and conformity to class as well as gender expectations plays a large role in these texts.