John Swartzwelder is an Emmy Award winning American comedy writer and novelist, also known for his work on the The Simpsons. Born in Seattle, Washington, Swartzwelder began his career working in advertising in Chicago. While in Chicago he would write a novelty song that became a local club scene hit. He was later hired as a writer for Lorne Michael’s hit sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, which ultimately led him joining the original writing team of The Simpsons in 1989. In 1996 he developed a multi-million dollar pilot episode for a comedy Western series.

Swartzwelder worked on The Simpsons as a writer and producer until 2003, and later contributed to The Simpsons Movie. He is credited with writing the largest number of Simpsons episodes by a large margin, 59 full episodes, with credited contributions to hundreds of episodes in all. The vast majority of his episodes were written for the first 10 seasons of the series, widely considered the “golden age” of Simpsons comedy.

After his retirement from The Simpsons, Swartzwelder began a career as a writer of comedy novels debuting with The Time Machine Did It, the first in his acclaimed Detective Frank Burly series. He has authored and published over a dozen books. His most recent standalone book, The Squirrel Who Saved Practically Everybody, was released in 2019. The latest book in the Detective Frank Burly series, Dead Detective Mountain, was released in late 2023 to much fanfare with John arriving on scene by jet pack before signing copies in front of the Barnes & Noble at the Mall of America.